


The Last Unicorn

by Lady_Kaos



Category: The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - The Last Unicorn Fusion, Eventual Happy Ending, Existential Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Idiots in Love, M/M, Magic, Multi, OT3, Transformation, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 56,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23520685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Kaos/pseuds/Lady_Kaos
Summary: The unicorn lived in an emerald wood, and he lived all alone, bored out of his mind....Until he learned he was the last. Now he's on the adventure he's always longed for, questing beside a hack magician and a woman who considers these idiots worth the headaches only because she doesn't have anywhere better to be.Or: a fusion with The Last Unicorn.
Relationships: Chel/Miguel/Tulio (Road to El Dorado), Chel/Tulio (Road to El Dorado), Miguel/Tulio (Road to El Dorado)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 19





	1. The Last Unicorn

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another simple one-shot gonna grow way out of hand. I've resolved myself to the fact this is gonna be a long one.
> 
> My muse never sleeps, and The Last Unicorn is near and dear to my heart, as dear as three certain idiots have become. The Unicorn, Schmendrick the Magician, and Molly Grue made such a compelling dynamic my brain decided to hijack yet another fairy tale. Note the Unicorn of the book is an old and dignified soul, aloof and isolated as a unicorn should be. And Unicorn!Miguel is... one threadbare excuse from charging off into adventure, because of course he is.

The unicorn lives in an emerald wood, and he lives all alone. He is still very young for his kind, though no man will ever live to reach his age, and he is still enough to not yet have fully grown into a sea foam coat, for he still has the silver sheen of youth to him. His eyes are clear and unwearied, green as springtime, and he is prone to prancing because he thinks it makes him look noble to the creatures of his forest. Because he is a unicorn, his natural grace does indeed elevate his prancing into elegance. Were he not, even the most near-sighted tortoise would recognize a naive idiot with delusions of grandeur.

He does not look anything like a horned horse, no more than a true dragon can be called an overgrown lizard. Even as a stallion he is smaller and lighter, cloven-hoofed gifted with the oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had. His neck is long and slender, and the mane that falls almost to the middle of his back is soft as chick fluff and fine as spun gold. The golden beard on his chin is still quite short, but the unicorn is proud of it regardless. The long horn above his eyes shines with its own soft morning light even in deepest midnight. He has not yet killed a dragon or healed a cursed wound with it, but he has knocked down ripe chestnuts for bear cubs and mended the injury of any beast bold enough to seek him out.

The unicorn is nameless. His own mother had only called him 'little one' or 'rascal,' or eve less patiently, 'what are you thinking, stop poking that!' It had only been the two of them in her wood, for unicorns are almost always solitary. They are content in their secret groves and only very rarely ever feel the need to seek out a mate from beyond their own domain. Their unions are brief and blessed, and there is no place no enchanted than where a unicorn has been foaled. But the unicorn has not seen his mother since he grew too big and restless for her wood, and roved out to claim his own, and certainly no unicorn since being chased out of other choice spots.

Unicorns are immortal. It is their nature to live alone in one place. The unicorn has no need for names, or for the passage of the years. It is always spring in his wood. There are no seasons, no migrations. For him time passes in the generations of the beasts who live and die around him. He watches their nests and burrows in awe, as young grow up to produce young, before they give their bodies back to the dirt.

The unicorn's days melt by in infinite bliss. He wears a rut through the verdant grass, wastes the hours by preening over his reflection and worrying after his animals. It is enough. This is the life of his mother, of his distant sire, of every unicorn in every quiet corner of the world.

One day the unicorn halts in his usual route around the beech trees. He knows his solitude disturbed long before he smells man on the wind, or hears their voices. They've stepped over the boundaries of his domain, and now his horn shivers with their presence.

The unicorn approaches so warily not even their horses sense his arrival. Two men, no doubt hunters, bitter from gunpowder and with muskets slung over their shoulders. His ears flick at their words, strange until they are not. Unicorns are magic, outlive cities and whole cultures. Only through the unicorn's desire to understand yet another newfangled tongue makes it so.

But eavesdropping is not enough. The unicorn strays closer. They will mistake him for a glint of sun through the trees, without keen-nosed hounds to warn them otherwise.

Such strange creatures men are, so hairless and hairy at the same time. The unicorn watches them in curiosity and faint, distant terror drilled into him by his mother. Despite his youthful idiocy, the unicorn is fortunate, for the wood he has chosen is dark and deep. There are yet still few men around to roam the deer paths. That makes these sightings all the more intriguing.

"I don't trust the feel of this forest," grumbles the older one, with silver in his beard. "Creatures that live in a unicorn's wood learn a little magic of their own in time, mainly concerned with disappearing. We'll find no game here."

The unicorn puffs his chest out proudly. _No, you certainly won't._

"Unicorns are long gone," scoffs the second. "If, indeed, they ever were at all. This is a forest like any other."

The unicorn blinks twice, before his ears snap back in irritation. _Stupid boy! What are humans teaching their children these days?_

"Then why do the leaves never fall here?" counters the old man. "Or the snow? I tell you, there's one unicorn left in the world - good luck to the lonely thing, I say - and so long as it lives in the forest, you won't take home so much as a titmouse here."

The unicorn snorts in mortal offense. He's not old! He'll never grow old! He almost charges out from the undergrowth to show these idiots exactly how young and magnificent he is. Instead he ghosts after them, even more engrossed than usual by a rare intelligent conversation.

"How do you know about unicorns?" asks the second hunter. "There are only books and tales and songs left. I know all the ones you do, and I've never seen a unicorn, or a unicorn's wood."

For a time the first hunter falls silent and the second basks in his smugness. The unicorn trails closer and closer, on the verge of goring that idiot in his frustration. Finally, the old man finds his courage.

"My great-grandmother saw one once."

"Oh? And did she catch it with a golden bridle then?"

The first hunter snorts. "No. That part's a fairy tale. You need only be pure of heart."

"Yes, yes," jests the younger. "Did she ride it naked and barebacked then, like a nymph in the early days of the world?"

_...What? H-How did you even **think** of-_

"She sat very still," murmurs the old man. "The unicorn put its head in her nap, and fell asleep. She never moved 'til it woke. She never could abide any beast, but she cried when she told me of the unicorn. Of course, she was very old by then, and cried over anything that reminded her of youth."

"Let's turn around and hunt somewhere else," the second hunter says suddenly, with a strange tone in his voice.

They turn their horses so abruptly the unicorn barely has time to step into a thicket. The hunters pass so close he can nearly reach out and touch the older with his horn. Their horses, the poor dumb brutes, don't even twitch their hears at his presence. The unicorn follows, desperate for more. Only near the edge of his forest do the men break their silence.

"Why did they go away, do you think?" blurts out the young man. "I-If there ever were unicorns, that is."

"Who knows?" sighs his elder. "Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?"

"No, but I wonder if anyone before us thought their time a good one for unicorns. But... But that's enough time for fairy tales. If we hurry there's enough light to hunt somewhere else. Come!"

They spur their horses into a gallop. The unicorn charges after them. Away the hunters break from his wood, into the golden sunlight. The unicorn grinds his hooves to a halt before he abandons the canopy. His heart still strains after the men, as they surge out of sight. But the old man draws his steed to a halt, looking back over his shoulder. The unicorn freezes, terrified and elated at finally being seen.

"Stay where you are, poor beast. This is no world for you. Keep your trees green and your friends long-lived. Pay no mind to the young, for they never become anything more than silly old men and women. And... And good luck to you."

The unicorn is not seen, for the old man's eyes fall on the wrong shadow of the trees. And the old man expects no answer back. Before the unicorn can call out, the men vanish over the hillside, and fade away into distant galloping. Before long there is only the eternal birdsong of his wood.

"I am the only unicorn there is," he utters aloud. He snorts at the ridiculousness.

Stupid humans. Unicorns are elusive by nature. It's not like they prance after mortals for validation. Or to be slaughtered for their horns.

The unicorn keeps an eternal spring. He knows when his boundaries are invaded. He'd _know_ if the other unicorns, if his own mother, were gone. And he feels nothing, so they can't be.

Yet this assurance brings him no peace. He wears deeper ruts through his wood, paces his pool until not even his horn can encourage the grass to spring back. The animals who usually fawn after his shadow exchange looks with each other and awkwardly avoid eye contact with him until he canters by. The unicorn takes to galloping up and down his food. Even when his sides heave for breath, his heart never rests.

Unicorns are solitary. Unicorns are blessed. The mere knowledge there are others like him in the world should be company enough.

It is not.

Unicorns are dignified. Unicorns are the embodiment of grace. Unicorns do not gallivant around like stupid young bucks or speak of adventures like hormone-filled animals ready to charge out of a unicorn's enchanted wood to seek a mate and certain death from hunters.

His mother isn't here to scold to him. The unicorn craves her voice more so than usual. Even the grouchy, mature stallions that shout at him to get out of their groves would be a welcome sight right now.

...Maybe he should just pop in for a visit. Just to make sure his mother isn't missing him back. And that the surly stallions are still preening around their pools.

The unicorn wanders in circles around the boundary, trying and failing to remember the direction from which he can. Beyond his enchantment the world seems... different. Surely it hasn't been _that_ long since he made his home here. He blames humans. Stupid people and their insatiable need to mess with their natural environment. He glares at the dirt road that has the gall to skirt through his wood and over that distant hillside, but not even a unicorn's stern disapproval is enough to make the world wash that eyesore away.

"I can't leave you," the unicorn assures a sleepy old tortoise one day. "I just can't. This is _my_ wood, my paradise. I just got everything just as I like it." The tortoise blinks sedately back. "B-But... suppose they're all out there, running together. What if they're waiting for me? I am still young... and... was never the sharpest horn in the herd. Maybe I just missed the call or-"

The unicorn rants. And rants. The sun sets and rises and sets once more. The tortoise wanders off a bit to nibble at the grass, and perhaps dozes more often than not. He can't hear her soft snores above his own voice, increasingly alarmed. But the tortoise is patient and a quiet listener. Eventually the unicorn talks himself into a decision.

"Yes," he murmurs, resolute. "Yes. I _have_ to go. If only to put this nonsense to bed." He laughs, tossing his head, before remembering his manners. "Er, thank you.For putting up with me."

The tortoise smiles tiredly. "Think nothing of it, dearie. Glad I could be of help."

"I promise to be back soon," vows the unicorn. "As quick as I can!"

Her smile strains. "Please, dearie, not _too_ fast. Winter isn't really that-"

"I promise!" the unicorn calls, already galloping away. The sooner he leaves, the sooner he can return. He needs to only gaze upon one other unicorn to be at rest.

At the edge of his wood, the unicorn pauses all the same. He beholds the road, like a silver river in the moonlight. He shivers in fear and anticipation.

"This is my destiny," he murmurs. "My fate."

He inhales one last breath from his fragrant forest. He holds it as far as he can down the road, before he must breathe again on air already bitter from some distant hearth fire.


	2. The Roving Gambler

The road hurries nowhere and has no end. It winds through villages and towns, flat plains and jagged mountains, valleys and alpine highlands. When the unicorn glimpses woods from the mountain crest, or groves in the places below, he leaves the road behind to scour the trees for mirror pools and enchanted meadows. The beasts skitter from his path or glance up at him in breathless awe. They are dumb and simple things, without magic to them, for their homes have no unicorns as their guardians. After searching, the unicorn always tosses his head up, and trots back to the road.

At least the road provides a clear cut path through this impossibly wide world. But it does not exist for a unicorn's ease. He travels it by night, hunkers down in copses and thickets where he is only a sliver of sunlight by day. At dawn and dusk, if the shadows are long, he strays close enough to human settlements only to catch strains of music from their squares or snatches of gossip from their homes. He can dare no closer.

Time has always passed him by. Now he passes through time. The green leaves grow vibrant with the colors of fire, then dull to brown before the branches lose all coverage. The beasts lowing in their fields grow thick and shaggy. Change should be repelling to him. Yet the unicorn awes at autumn's riotous color, stands in his first snowfall until blanketed in pure white. Even the icy air is thrilling. Until he needs to bed down that first chilly night.

The unicorn wanders farther still. He passes through people and yet more people. In a dozen new tongues he hears all sorts of idle prattle, and not a single word breathed of his kind.

The unicorn grows weary and unwary. He loses hope as he does his natural fear of the humans around him, for these days they seem to be ubiquitous as ants.

Early one morning, when he is about to veer off the road, he sees an old man hoeing in his garden. The unicorn should hide. Instead he stands in the road and watches the man work. The motions are repetitive, so wondrously mundane the unicorn cannot tear his gaze away. Eventually the old man straightens and finally realizes what has graced his presence.

"Oh," he breathes. "Oh, you're beautiful."

The unicorn tosses his head. Even weary from the road and slathered in dust he makes a stunning sight indeed. When the man clumsily undoes his belt and makes it into a loop, the unicorn is prouder still.

"Of course you know me," he boasts. "The old are always wise enough to. You know what you are, and what you are not; a dumb, dirt poor farmer chasing after something that runs faster than you." Despite the warning, the man still lurches after him. The unicorn deftly sidesteps. "Please. I should be hunted with bells and banners. It takes a whole _procession_ to make me even come close enough to investigate, thank you."

"My foot must have slipped," murmurs the farmer, too thick to realize his own clumsiness is nothing against a unicorn's grace. "Steady now, you handsome thing."

"What do you even intend to do with me?" wonders the unicorn, honestly curious. "My mother always said men never quite knew what to do with unicorns if you ever actually succeeded in catching one of us."

"Steady," pants the old man, already out of breath. "Pretty. You pretty little boy."

 _"PRETTY?"_ trumpets the unicorn, so shrilly the farmer claps his hands to his ears. "You take me for just _pretty?_ Me, the miracle who deigns let you gaze upon his brilliance?"

"Good horse," soothes the old man, leaning against the fence and wiping his face. "Curry you up, clean you off, and you'll be the prettiest colt anywhere." He reaches out with the belt again, utterly deaf to the unicorn's spluttered indignity. "Take you to the fair. Come on, boy."

"A _horse,"_ the unicorn repeats, revolted. "Y-You... blind, senile old man!" As the man approaches him, he hooks his horn through the belt, and disdainfully tosses it into the bushes. "A horse, am I? A horse indeed!"

For a moment the unicorn and the old man lock eyes. The farmer's eyes widen in awe, before the unicorn dramatically rears up and canters down the road, right through the town square, for anyone with functioning eyesight to properly appreciate. His vanity could sorely use a proper chase. He is treated to murmurs of 'now, there's a horse' and 'what a horse.'

The unicorn gives up on towns after that, not even having the heart to eavesdrop the guitar players. He travels through them only when he can't detour around a ridge or river. Always some men give chase. They run with ropes and sugar cubes, never with proper reverence. They whistle like he's a dog and call to him as Colt and Boy and Horsie. None ever know his true name, the closest he shall ever have to one. Even when he slows down to let their horses catch their scent, and shy away from it, they don't know him even thrown from the saddle. But the horses always know him. All the beasts do.

"Idiots," fumes the unicorn, stamping the ground with a cloven hoof and lashing his tufted tail. "Don't they know their anatomy? Do they mistake wolves for dogs now, or their own children for apes?" He sighs as a solution comes to him. "If humans are blind to what they're looking at now, then perhaps there unicorns left in the world, unknown and glad of it."

Deep down, the unicorn knows this is not true. The young don't know him, neither do the old and wise. Beyond hope and vanity, the unicorns are gone, far enough that mankind cannot properly remember them.

He knows they are gone like he should have never left his forest.

Though he is a stranger in stranger lands, some things are a constant. One afternoon, when the breeze stirs his mane, the unicorn blinks his eyes open to a butterfly alighting upon his horn. Even for his kind he is striking, with riotous red wings tipped in rich blue and green. Dancing along the unicorn's horn, the butterfly salutes with curling feelers. "Why, I am a roving gambler? How do you do?"

The unicorn laughs for the first time since the farmer. "Better, now that you're here."

Butterflies have only visited his wood, gracing him with their snippets of song and gossip picked up from virtuosos and the poorest poets. Their whimsical natures prevented them eve settling, even in a unicorn's wood. The unicorn almost requests the butterfly's favorite song of the hour (for they have so many), then he pauses.

"Do you know what I am, butterfly? Any idea at all?" The butterfly rattles off a dozen names, each more nonsensical than the last. Upon being called a 'loquacious to a fault,' the unicorn sighs and gives up. "Never mind. Really, your company is enough."

Butterflies live short, merry lives. Of course they never have the time or patience to keep their stories straight. Unable to sleep, the unicorn rises early for his travel. The butterfly happily follows, singing on of three-inch fools and no sons of women born. It's better than the usual silence. At least the butterfly recognizes the unicorn as an audience, and not just a horse fit for the fair. Ugh.

As the sun slips beneath the horizon, and the clouds bleed red, the butterfly finally lifts up from his horn. Against the dusk his wings shimmer like jewels.

"When I am forth, bid me farewell, and smile," the butterfly says politely.

"Farewell," the unicorn offers warmly. "May... May you hear many more songs." What _else_ can an immortal being offer to one that won't live past summer's end?

The butterfly does not fly away. He remains hovering above his head, shivering in the evening air.

"Go on," the unicorn urges awkwardly. "Just... _shoo._ It-It's too cold for you to be out."

But the butterfly tarries, humming to himself. "Unicorn," he utters, as the unicorn gapes at him. "Old French, _unicorne._ Latin, _unicornis._ Literally; one-horned. A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn. _If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you that had beards that pleas'd me, complexions that_ -"

"You do know me!" the unicorn exclaims, his gust blowing the poor butterfly back a good twenty foot. "Forgive me," he mumbles, before pressing on. "Butterfly, please, if you know me, have you seen others like me? Where might I find them?"

"Butterfly, butterfly, where shall I hide?" he crooned in the waning light. "The sweet and bitter fool will pleasantly appear. Christ, that you were in my arms, and I in my bed again."

"Please," the unicorn intones, as the butterfly trembles uncertainly. "Tell me there are others like me, and I will go home and know no more sorrow."

"Listen," the butterfly urges, in a small and strange voice. "Listen. You can find your people if you are brave. They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Obsidian Jaguar ran close behind them and covered their footprints. Let nothing you dismay, but don't be half-safe."

"The Obsidian Jaguar?"

"The Lord of War shall roar, and the cities shiver in their dread. Before him they shall flee, all of them, to the ends of the earth. Listen, listen, listen quickly!"

The unicorn shouts out his listening, but two minutes for a butterfly are two minutes to many. Already ranting of moths and fisticuffs, the rambler moves on, his defiant poetry soon swallowed by the night.

The unicorn sighs after him. The sweetness of recognition pales to the bitterness that the talk of Obsidian Jaguars and unicorns pushed to the ends of the earth are simply more snatches of song, picked up from gods know where. With nowhere else to go, the unicorn trudges on. Though this land is too south to know true autumn he shivers all the same in the night air.

Tired and disheartened, he beds down early, right by the roadside. He dreams of his forest, pure and untainted by men and sorrow. Though naturally a wary sleeper, this unicorn is tired in body and soul, and has had his fear worn down by many peaceful nights in his wood. He does not rouse as the wagon train rattles closer, for their wheels were muffled by rags, and the bells of the horse harnesses wrapped in wool.

In broad daylight the nine wagons would be a garish sight indeed. Under the light of a clouded moon their colors are dulled to a shade less searing to the eyes. The nine haggard horses pulling them might have been pale gray, were the light kinder and their coats curried. The heavy, moth-eaten hangings draped over the wagon sides stir forbiddingly in the breeze. On their sides is printed _DAMA FORTUNA'S MAGIC CARNIVAL (Fairy tale creatures, for your feature.)_

The driver of the lead wagon is a squat old woman. She pulls her horse to a stop, the other wagons grinding behind her. She squints down where the unicorn slumbers, squinting through her spectacles. She eases herself down, gliding close. For an eternity she simply stares. Then her lips curl up. "Well, well, happily ever afters still exist. And here I'd thought I'd seen the last of you. Oh, if only _he_ knew." She smirks. "But I don't think I'll tell him."

Dama Fortuna snaps her fingers twice. The drivers of the second and third wagons come to her. One might have been a handsome man before age started eating away at his hairline and the hollows in his cheeks. The other is tall and thin, swallowed by his black cloak, with deep blue eyes.

"Yes, Mom?" eagerly asks the first man.

"Sweetheart," coos Dama. "What do you see lying there?"

Her son wrinkles his nose in distaste. "A dead horse, or one near enough." He chuckles disdainfully. "Give it to the sphinx, or the dragon."

Dama Fortuna sighs in disappointment. "Not quite, dear." Her eyes snap to the second man. "Well, magician? Enlighten us." Her son snorts a laugh, but she is in no mood tonight. The second man stares long and hard, until her patience wears thin. She is a short woman. She snatches his cloak with one manicured talon and hoists him down to eye level. "Answer me, you sorry hack!"

"A horse," he mutters. "Just a stupid horse."

Dama Fortuna studies him. Then she smiles sweetly. "Of course, you lying twit. A white, ordinary stallion. He's perfect for the Carnival. The ninth cage is waiting for him."

"I'll go find some rope," volunteers her son.

This time Dama Fortuna does roll her eyes when she grabs his arm. "Junior, if ever bothered paying attention beyond knights in shining armor, you'd know the rope strong enough to hold him has not yet been woven! We'll have to make do with iron bars, and a sleep spell to keep him complacent."

From her bosom the old witch pulls out her wand, ancient but still pristinely polished. She waves it in a complex arc, murmuring the spells in the back of her throat she didn't need in her youth, when her mind was sharp and focused. Still the unicorn stops stirring. Dama Fortuna sways in weary satisfaction when she finishes. Charming steps dutifully to her side. She squeezes his hand only once, grinning at the smell of ozone hanging over her subject.

"There. He'll sleep to sunrise. Do ensure he's caged by then, boys, or I might just _make_ my new creature from something else."

"Of course, Mom," assures Charming. When she is out of earshot, his gaze slants to the hack wizard. "You'd earn us more money as a freak on display than all your parlor tricks ever did."

"Uh huh," absently agrees the other man, who usually has the spine to at least snark back. His eyes are still fixed to the creature sleeping in the grass.

"What on earth has gotten into you?"

"Nothing," blurts out the magician, blinking rapidly. "It's just... The horse was a surprise."

When the sun breaches the horizon, the unicorn awakes to iron bars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unicorn!Miguel has turned out to be as vain and self-absorbed as my Apollo!Miguel, and it is glorious.
> 
> Because The Road to El Dorado has a somewhat limited cast, I am once more borrowing characters from other Dreamworks properties to help fill some of the voids, because why not. The old man is... an old man. The butterfly is... a tad inspired by a very minor character from my big El Dorado 'verse. With some of The Last Unicorn's very meta butterfly-ness thrown in. But with a lot more Shakespearean, period friendly references, because by gods did Beagle really stuff so many modern Easter eggs into his.
> 
> But Mommy Fortuna and her assistant Rukh's roles? Filled by Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming of Shrek 2 fame. Because one of Fairy Godmother's draft names turned out to be, I shit you not, Dama Fortuna. The beasts in their menagerie should hopefully be mostly drawn directly from other Dreamworks properties or inspired by them - like a 'sphinx' over a manticore because Prince of Egypt. And a 'Night Fury' over a generic dragon.


	3. The Enchanted Carnival

Dama Fortuna's carnival would seem almost festive in the daylight, if the colors weren't so eye-searingly bright and its setting not a patchy field outside a shabby little town. Though her son diligently leads a crowd of straggling peasants on the grand tour, his mother herself is nowhere to be seen. The unicorn idly tracks their progress.

Charming stops in front of each the nine cages, arranged in a circle, and waxes poetic on the contents of each. "Behold, the sphinx, with the head of a woman and the form of a lioness. She tried blocking our path one midnight with a nasty riddle, but Dama stumped her with a riddle of her own and _I_ wrestled her into submission. Fairy tale creatures, for your feature."

"Here's our dragon, the world's very last Night Fury, the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself. We were called in because its nest kept terrorizing the flocks. I slaughtered them all, of course, but we kept the prize beast for our show. It's prone to breathe fire from time to time - usually at people who poke at it, little boy."

"Dear ladies, please keep back, for _this_ is our satyr. We captured him under curious circumstances, those revealed to gentlemen only for a token fee after the show. Fairy tale creatures, for your feature."

The unicorn flicks his gaze from them to the man skulking at the edge of his cage. Even by human standards he looks unkempt, from his baggy cloak to the stubble that doesn't even have the decency to be a proper beard. Beneath the scruff his actual face looks unwrinkled, though his eyes are older than the unicorn's.

"The old hag warned me to stay away from you," he whispers smugly. "She and her sniveling son have mocked me from day one, because they know I'm a true threat to them and all they stand for."

Though he is inches away the man might as well be across a chasm, for the iron bars that loom dark and cold between them. The unicorn spins restlessly in his cage, for there is nowhere to escape. Iron encircles him from every side, seemingly closer with every breath. No evil creature can stand the touch of iron. The unicorn is the utter opposite, but the metal is cold and cruel, and a being of pure magic suffers all the same. His bones are sand and his blood water. He can almost hear the bars sniggering at him. That large, ugly lock giggles and jeers.

The man winces. "I'm sorry. Can you please look at your fellow legends? Look at them, and tell me what you see."

"Our Roc," Charming informs his audience. "Only a juvenile, of course. The adults carry off elephants. Please don't mind the chill. Our baby here can only make things cold, and this warm weather puts it in a fearsome mood. Its mother near froze our caravan over in her blizzard. Its feathers are cold as snow, and its talons made of ice."

The unicorn stares through the bars to the creature in that cage. His head cocks in disbelief. "It's a.... sea eagle," he murmurs. "A sad old bird missing half his feathers and tethered to his perch, the poor thing. Are these people _blind?"_

"Look again," the man urges.

The unicorn stares, more bewildered by the second. The sphinx is a haggard lioness, the snarling Night Fury a dozing crocodile, and the satyr a limping ape.

"Take note of the arms," Charming prattles on. "They're strong enough to rip a man's head clean off."

"Really," the man repeats. "Look again."

The unicorn squints. There, in the darkness of the cages, he starts to make out second shadows, gaining definition with every moment. There is the sphinx, with her bloodied claws and cryptic smile, pacing over the haggard lioness. So too are there others. The Night Fury unfurls his wings and spits sparks without heat. Mothers cover the eyes of children as the satyr shoots them crude gestures. The longer he stares, the truer the shadows become, until their real shapes are murky and undefined within.

"...What?"

The man laughs wanly. "What indeed."

"The Abominable Snowman never strays down from the high mountains of the east, but I endured blistering winds to hunt for him. The same villages that hailed him as a god were losing their daughters to them, and no true hero lets a maid go unrescued. Why, he was just about to rip some poor girl's head off when..."

The unicorn tunes out the droning. The Abominable Snowman is hulking in his cage, huffing and snarling down at the enthralled crowd at his feet. Squinting through that white fur, the unicorn can just make out the graying brown bear hunched over in the distant corner.

"Con artist!" the unicorn huffs indignantly. "I was caught by... by... some two-bit hack!"

The man snorts. "Well, yes and no. Back in the day it's said Dama Fortuna could enthrall kings and transform frogs into princes. These days she barely has the strength for illusions. Even that would be beyond her if this wasn't an entire world of suckers. They _want_ to be dazzled with smoke and mirrors, see sphinxes and dragons over some poor old animals. They're the same sort of idiots that can mistake a unicorn for a white colt."

The unicorn lifts his weary head, suddenly aware he is being addressed as an equal, and understood in turn. The man smiles, truly smiles. In that moment the cynical shadow falls from his eyes. Without them looks young, shockingly so, for one with eyes so old should at least have crow's feet around them.

"Who are you?" the unicorn croaks.

"Lately I'm called Tulio the Terrible," the man admits. "Theoretically for 'Tulio, the awesome and terrible wizard,' but I stick to mystic mumbo jumbo and let the audience think I'm holding back my true strength." He shrugs. "But it's a living, far from the worst I've had, and it won't be my last."

The man's assurance only makes the unicorn more sure of his own fate as an eternal sideshow attraction. He once more paces his cage, for it is the closest he can come to outrunning his panic. Charming's tour winds closer. He pauses before a netted cage containing only a small flock of sparrows.

"The Sirens of Anthemusa," he introduces. "These beauties drive even the strongest men mad with their songs. They'll dash their ships upon the rocks to reach them, so the sirens can feast upon their waterlogged flesh. But, ladies and gentlemen, don't be alarmed. Under Dama Fortuna's enchantments all they can do is entertain you. No song ever sounds the same.

Above the sparrows are the shades of women, watery and flowing from one to the other. The only hint to their true nature are the amorphous wings that sometimes form from their arms or backs. The unicorn's ears twitch at the tuneless chatter of sparrows. Yet somehow their sounds wind into harmony, a song that makes people in the crowd tear up or lean closer to the bars, where the sirens grant them wicked smiles. The unicorn shakes himself to chase the song from his head.

"Why are they different?" he whispers.

"The poor little bastards believe," Tulio sighs. "Why be little pests if you can be the legend that drove great men to their doom? Their belief lends to the spell. If those suckers ever withdrew their wonder, all that'd be left are sirens thinking themselves cursed into sparrows."

The unicorn shivers, instead glancing to the cage right next to his own. His breath turned to ice in his lungs.

This cage is still mostly shrouded, with only one cloth banner folded partway up. In that darkness paces something that appears a skeletal horse at first glance. The longer the unicorn looks, the larger his dread grows. Its eyes glow like lurid moons, but only seem to swallow up the daylight. It is never parted from the shadows, the edges its form wispy and without definition. It flickers from one end to the other. When it catches sight of the unicorn, it makes a sound somewhere between hiss and chuckle.

"This one is real," the unicorn declares quietly.

Tulio grimaces. "Dama calls it Celaeno. They feed on the dreams on the sleeping. The old hag caught it by chance. It... Well, there's a reason this wagon train is half the size it once was. And it's only partly because Dama Fortuna can't spread her illusions like she used to. It was a terrible thing to take it, that they both know." Tulio shudders. "Celaeno is real, and true things melt Dama's magic. Not that it stops her from thinking she can make _real_ magic work to her advantage."

"Her name means 'Dark One,'" Charming informs the crowd. "For good reason, obviously. Though... none of us ever have gotten close enough to confirm the gender, but they are called night _mares_ after all." The pale-faced crowd do not laugh. Only a few dare wavering smiles. "None of our creatures put up a fight like she did. Fortunately my blade is mighty, and Dama Fortuna's magics unmatched in their might. I fought her into submission, and my mother bound her. Maybe some of you will see her lovely face in your dreams tonight."

Celaeno does not react to the crowd. It stands still as a statue, lurid eyes never leaving Charming's.

"You've gotta be long gone when that thing gets loose," Tulio mutters. "It's... It's not gonna be good."

"I _can't_ get out of here," the unicorn reminds him.

Tulio draws himself up taller, gaze flickering to the approaching tour. "Don't worry, I've got a plan. Just... Just stand there, until I get back."

The unicorn is about to retort he has nothing else to do, before the supposed magician slips behind the cages.

The sky is growing dark when Charming stops before his cage. The crowd pauses behind him in sudden shyness, even when he grandly moves aside. "The unicorn."

Tears brew. Jaws drop. Chests stop moving. By their sorrow and loss and sweetness the unicorn knows himself seen. He accepts their hunger as his rightful tribute. He thinks of the hunter's great-grandmother, what it must be like to grow old, and to cry for wondrous days gone by.

The smallest little girl in the party squints, tugging at her mother's skirts. "Mama," she whispers. "He's not a unicorn."

"Sh."

"But he's got _two_ horns!"

_"Sh!"_

The unicorn goes cross-eyed. There is the golden glow of his true horn, untouched despite the double-image of the sickly sliver vying for real estate space. The unicorn stamps his hoof in frustration. It is only by yet another illusion these idiots are convinced against their own ignorance that thee is indeed a unicorn in their midst.

"Just the one horn, thank you," he sourly tells the little girl.

She gasps.

Charming loudly clears his throat before the girl can kick up any more of a fuss, bringing them before the final cage, entirely shrouded. "Most shows would end here, for what can possibly top a genuine unicorn? But Dama Fortuna's Enchanted Carnival has one mystery yet to unveil, the most magical of them all. She has made frogs into kings and princesses into ogresses. She can make all your dreams come true, or make you long for death if ever spite her by mistake. Behold the ruler of high summer, the mistress of winter, the Fairy Queen!"

On their own the curtains draw back. Inside the cage dance lights all colors of the rainbow. The air crackles like the still before a thunderbolt. Something dances in the brilliance. The unicorn squints at gossamer wings and voluptuous curves. The Fairy Queen's laugh is rich and thick and wild. Her grace should lure the crowd closer, as the sirens had. Instead they only back away.

"Glorious, isn't she?" cajoles Charming. "She is magic embodied. She makes heroes and unmakes them at a moment's whim. She has thrown down gods and tyrants. No magic can keep her here, for the Fairy Queen is no prisoner of ours. She's here this moment, and stealing your children the next, because one poor fool in this crowd might have glanced at her in the most offensive way. Do take care to remember her invitations."

The Fairy Queen croons a song without words, one that threatens to drive the whole night into madness. The unicorn tosses his head and near backs against the bars, repulsed by that sort of ancient, callous, fickle magic that heeds not even those like him.

The crowd hastens away, no one ever departing alone. Children cling to parents and partners to each other. Strangers bunch together, nervously peering over their shoulders and near swooning as the Fairy Queen calls after them.

"Leaving so soon?" Charming snickers after them. "Won't the gentlemen stay for the story of our satyr?" His laughter adds yet another odious air to the night. "Fairy tale creatures, for your feature!"

The unicorn shakes his head against the sibilant whispers echoing in his mind, the electric fingers clutching at his mane and tail. He slashes his horn through the air, and the heaviness over him shatters. He narrows his eyes at that final cage to not behold a Fairy Queen about to turn him into a toad, but Dama Fortuna, cackling and brushing sparkles off her shoulders. Not of all the unicorn's dread dispels. He eyes the witch with newfound wariness.

"What a show, sweetheart," the witch purrs to her son, fluttering down from the unlocked cage with grace belying her age. "I've never lost my flair for showmanship."

Charming tries and fails at a smile. "Mommy, please. Maybe it's time to get rid of the nightmare now." He shivers and lowers his voice, fearful as a child. "I...I _feel_ her eating away at your magic. She thinks about eating _me,_ piece by piece. I feel her thinking it! Please, Mommy!"

"Pipe down, Junior!" Dama Fortuna's own voice is fierce with fear. "I can turn Celaeno into a toad if she ever gets loose, or a cloud of bubbles. No other holds a nightmare captive in this world, and none ever will. She is mine, and mine alone. I would keep her if I had to feed her a slice of your liver every day."

"Oh, that's so selfless of you." Charming makes a hurt noise, sidling further away. "What if she wants only your liver, Mom? What would you do then?"

"Feed her yours all the same!" his mother sneers back. "She'd never know the difference."

Alone in the moonlight, Dama Fortuna flutters from cage to cage, rattling locks and prodding at bars with her wand. When she reaches Celaeno's cage, the nightmare makes a sound like cleaving ice, equine form dissolving into a seething black cloud. For a moment the very seams of the cage rattle ominously. Then Dama Fortuna slashes her wand and the iron falls back into unyielding rigidity. The nightmare resumes its horse shape, unnaturally still.

"Not yet," the witch rasps. "Not yet." Her and the nightmare stare with the same empty, all-devouring eyes. "You're mine. If you kill me, you're mine."

The nightmare does not move. A cloud parts from over the moon, as the night becomes a little less choking.

"Not yet," Dama Fortuna repeats once more, then her gaze flits to the unicorn. "Well, I had you frightened for a little while, didn't I? It takes skill to fool even a naive young unicorn into thinking any mortal strong enough to change him into a toad, or a salamander, or something even less pleasant. And is it some sham that holds the Dark One prisoner? No other will-"

"Look, old woman, forget the boasting. Your death sits in that cage and hears you."

"Yes," she agrees. "But at least I know where mine is. You were out on the road hunting for your own death." The witch cackles. "I know where that one is too, but you'll not find it. You should be grateful."

The unicorn pressed forward, uncaring of the iron searing into him. "The Obsidian Jaguar," he murmurs, and Dama Fortuna's breath seizes. "Where can I find it?"

"He and that zealot priest can't have you!" she whispers, shrill and fierce. "You belong to me!"

An older and wiser unicorn might have trended to gentleness, to point out the futility of clinging an immortal being. But this young only tosses his head back in a scornful laugh. "Not now, and not ever! You will be dust and these cage rotted away, and I shall be as magnificent then as I am now. You can't hold me anymore than you can hold Celaeno. You'd be wise to let us go now, and live with your poor little shadows in peace."

"Never," she chokes. The air around her crackles with her ire, searing many hapless moths into smoking wisps. "Do you think I settled for these shams, born of imbeciles, because I never knew _true_ magic? Oh, in the day I held whole kingdoms in my thrall. Kings and queens and emperors came groveling to _me._ And I all have to show for it is a bastard idiot, and _you._ I told my boy I'd tear out his own liver to feed the nightmare if I had to, and I would. To keep you I'd slit his throat and carve out his heart, I'd..."

Mama Fortuna rants herself into gibberish and then to silence. She is still panting for breath when the unicorn cuts in snidely, "Speaking of livers, real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back. The true witches know that."

Tears shimmer behind the witch's spectacles.

"And what do _you_ know of sacrifice?" she hisses back. "It is not in your kind to love or to hate. You can't even properly value your own lives, when you think you might have them for eternity. Yet, for all that grace, it takes a washed up old hag like me to make idiots recognize a true unicorn. These days the only one who'd know you for true is Balam Qoxtok. You'd be stay with me and stay false, lest you wind up swallowed down his throat like all the others."

Dama Fortuna vanishes into her wagon and the nightmare lets the last of the clouds retreat from the moon.

The unicorn sighs. "I don't suppose you have your breakout planned for tonight, hm?" Celaeno cackles cryptically. "All right then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dreamworks cameos include a 'sphinx' for Prince of Egypt, a 'Night Fury' for How to Train Your Dragon, a 'roc' and 'sirens' for Sinbad, a yeti for that yeti movie, and Dama Fortuna with an amped up version of her Fairy Godmother persona. 
> 
> And of course, the real deal, an honest to gods nightmare from Rise of the Guardians. The tale of its capture involves Dama and Charming throwing ten of their men at it first. But, as Beagle and a lot of cautionary tales of magic warn, true magic never comes from sacrificing others.
> 
> ...Not that unicorns are exactly attached enough to anything for that lecture to be effective from one. Not yet, at least ; )


	4. The Understanding

The night crawls by. Tulio tries everything he can to slip away, but for all his faults, Charming is a dutiful son. He watches the other man like a hawk. It's not like Tulio should have anywhere else to be. The other men in the carnival learned not to trust him ages ago, when he swindled them out of their savings. Because he was so distracted by that unicorn today he even missed out on prime flirting time. There's no one in town he can plausibly claim wants him for a good time tonight.

Fortunately, Charming is as proud as he is thick. Eventually Tulio does trap the pompous twit in a riddle, one that should keep him occupied for hours. Only then can he bundle up in his cloak and slip away from the threadbare tents.

Dama Fortuna's beasts are sad, broken old things. They stare listlessly into nothing or sleep on, dreaming of better days. But never Celaeno. The nightmare rumbles as he steals by its cage. Tulio shudders.

Tulio's heart clenches when he sights the unicorn, so small and dull behind iron bars. Weary green eyes find his own.

"I'm sorry," he blurts out, before the unicorn can accuse him of abandonment. "So, so sorry. Dama set her son to watch me. I couldn't get away sooner."

At his voice the unicorn stirs, rising from a weary tide as some measure of disdain returns to him. "That hag enchanted _me_. Me, the most magical being to ever grace this sorry sideshow." He snorts. "It's beneath my dignity to be stuck with two horns."

"Ruins the mystique?" Tulio jokes weakly.

The unicorn wilts. "There's never been a spell on me before. But, then again, I've never not been known before. Not until I last left my wood."

"It's rare for someone to be taken for who they truly are," Tulio mutters. He gulps as those fathomless eyes widen in despair. "Not you, of course! You're too wise to be fooled like that."

"Yes," the unicorn says, a beat too late. "Indeed I am."

The man bites on his tongue to keep his laugh from slipping out, because innocent and isolated unicorns make sorry liars. "Yes," he agrees. "I'd say I knew who you were immediately, and that you saw me the same." He pauses uncertainly, but something in the unicorn's gaze makes him spill out the rest. "I'd like to call myself your... ally, if you'd be so bold, but there's no deceiving you. If you see me as hack or braggart or heathen, then I'm certain that's what I am. Men are experts at lying to themselves."

The unicorn stares at him. Sweat beads down Tulio's neck. "I think you are my friend," the unicorn declares at last. Tulio's jaw drops. "Will you help me?"

He swallows thickly. "If not you, then no one. You're... You're my last chance."

The unicorn cocks his head, before his ears twitch at the sounds of the menagerie stirring and whining for their breakfasts. Celaeno only hisses, condensing into a sullen shadow as the morning light intrudes upon the darkness of its cage. Tulio shudders. Its imprisonment is now only measured in days, if not hours. He and the unicorn are both dead if the nightmare frees itself first.

"Tonight," he vows. "I'm freeing you tonight, no matter what." The unicorn stares. Tulio stares back, before his gaze flickers down to the hand he impulsively shoved into the cage. The man clears his throat awkwardly. "Er, never mind this part. Force of habit."

"No," the unicorn blurts out, before Tulio can withdraw his hand. "W-What am I supposed to do with it, exactly?"

"When people make really serious promises, we shake hands," he explains. "It helps enforce the sanctity of the agreement or something."

"All right. Let's do that, then." The unicorn holds up a cloven hoof.

Tulio gawks. This is a _unicorn,_ for gods' sake. He can't just sully that perfect hoof with his grimy, thieving fingers! Tulio stutters on explaining this to the unicorn, but can't seem to find any words that won't make him utterly insulted. Under those wide and innocent eyes, all Tulio can do is plaster on a smile and gingerly shake that stupidly pure hoof. He whips his hand back when Charming's voice ruins what had been his best morning in years.

"Magician!" Charming calls. "I've got it, magician, and this time it only took me two hours! It's a teapot, right?"

Tulio drags a weary hand down his face. "The wind, you twit," he mutters. "Teapots don't flutter by any stretch of the imagination!" He starts to slink away, but not before offering the unicorn his bravest grin. "Tonight. Just trust me 'til dawn."

His last sight of the unicorn are its eyes, bewildered but trusting all the same.

Tulio's heart clenches.

* * *

On the surface, the day crawls by like any other. Especially so, considering the jailbreak in store tonight. Setting a unicorn free will be Tulio's grandest notice of resignation since that time he turned that other employer green. Sure, he'd been aiming to turn her into a road, and she'd actually loved a look that improved her reputation among the evil witches, but still. He'd made quite the impression then, and an even bigger one now!

But first comes one last little song and dance. Tulio chants impressive sounding gibberish and waves his hands theatrically. All he does are the little things, and even those he can't do well. From his sleeve he pulls forth a squealing piglet instead of a dove. The dead rose he tries to transform back into a seed decides it wants to be a radish instead. Instead of pulling the queen of hearts from behind that pretty brunette's ear, he sneezes the whole damn card suit in her face.

With his usual bravado he plays off his mistakes as surprise and misdirection. The audience is too mystified to question it further.

As usual, Tulio flirts boldly with the single women, and more discreetly with the men. He doesn't have his usual luck, because people sense his heart isn't quite in it today. Which suits him just fine. His minders smirk at his apparent misfortune and take to neglecting him again. Why should they fear Tulio the Terrible, who can't turn cream into butter?

When he can, Tulio spies on Charming's circuit of the cages. The fables are as fearsome as ever. The Night Fury blazes and the sphinx calls out her unanswerable riddles. Some of them are stolen from Tulio's playbook. The sirens croon their song and parents push their children past the satyr's lewdness.

Charming skips his usual spiel for Celaeno. He hurries the onlookers through after only gritting out its name and the meaning of it. Celaeno smirks, maw impossibly wide, as the group passes. Tulio shudders.

This time the unicorn does not bask at all in the rapt attention of the crowd, not when they need a witch's magic to convince them of the creature in their midst. Instead the unicorn snorts and flounces around to show them only his rear end. Tulio turns his chortle into a hacking cough.

Night falls swift and relentless. Perhaps Celaeno wills it. Maybe it's only Tulio's paranoid mind. Old magic like the nightmare's is a shifty sort.

Charming's insufferable bravado wanes as the night descends without a single star shining through the choking black clouds above. His mind is upon Celaeno.

Tulio pretends to casually knock back a wine goblet. He had meant to turn the water into pomegranate juice. Instead his tongue puckers on beet juice. Ugh. "Hey, Charming, care to test your momentous intellect again?"

The man scoffs. "Please, you thieving hack. You can't have a single good one left in you."

"Hah!" Tulio laughs, in that specific way that sets even the stingiest gambler over the edge. "Wanna bet?"

Charming indeed bets. Tulio almost tries the fish riddle, before remembering he bamboozled this balding fool six months ago with it. So instead he dredges up his darkest one, the perfect distraction for a night seemingly without end. "No hero can stand before, nor god wrestle down, what walks with you. It touches and it takes."

Charming's grin falls. He ponders thoughts too dark and deep for his shallow mind while Tulio creeps off.

There is very little to pack. Most of his meager belongings are already tucked away into his shabby excuse of a wizard's robe. Dama Fortuna's freak show has never been home, and Tulio has always known he'll need to abandon it at very short notice. It was gonna be soon anyway. He's already been here long enough for Charming to try a different salve every time his hairline recedes, for Dama Fortuna to drown herself in greasy pleasures whenever she discovers another wrinkle. Eventually even they would realize there is no gray creeping at his temples, no frown lines his stubble is hiding.

Tulio slips through the cages with the veteran grace of one who has evaded both angry guards and furious spouses. The beasts slumber away, save for the sparrows with their siren song and Celaeno's blazing eyes. He shudders with a bone-deep, primal cold unsuited for this climate.

Through the dark the unicorn shines soft and true as the north star. The unicorn only flicks a tense ear toward him. His eyes never leave the nightmare.

"I think we have very little time," he murmurs.

"Yeah," Tulio concedes grimly. "Best get to work then."

Dama Fortuna has made three fatal mistakes in her Enchanted Carnival. The last was capturing a true unicorn, wearing her power too thin in throwing her illusions over purity and willful ignorance. The second was in binding Celaeno, for Dama can no more hold her nightmare than she can delay the sunset.

Her first was mistaking Tulio for a harmless hack. Young pretenders are so rife these days, because they think a trick and a hint of drama make them magical. For he too is real. He is Tulio the Trickster, last of the hermetic masters, and he is far older than he looks.

...In theory.

But Tulio owes it to the unicorn to try, to prove himself just as true. The unicorn is Dama Fortuna's third and last mistake. Three's a magic number. Those are good odds for Tulio.

"What about the other one?" the unicorn wonders. "The one who can't stop talking about himself?"

Tulio pushes back his sleeves. "I gave him a riddle impossible for him to answer. He'll sit there all night than acknowledge the answer sitting him in the face." For that answer is old age, that Charming's glory days have passed, and now maidens grimace at him in distaste and adventurers outright laugh him down when he tries to swagger along and steel their glory.

He sings cold and low. Spells of destruction are more certain than those of creation, and the unicorn himself too great to be made an accidental target. When he stops the cage should now be brittle as old cheese, rusted through the core. Tulio lifts his hands to crumble the bars. Instead he stifles an agonized scream as the iron sears his skin.

"Oh f-" Tulio bites back his profanity, instead gritting out, "Must've gotten the inflection wrong." The unicorn stares in horror at his scalded hands. Tulio smiles weakly back, hiding them in his sleeves. "It comes and goes, but that was just my warm-up."

His shoulders square as he considers his next course of action. Go big or go home. This poor unicorn certainly deserves to go home, away from hungry old witches and people too blind to appreciate the truth before them. This time Tulio speaks three angled words, chokes back a grimace, and snaps his shrieking fingers.

The cage evaporates. The unicorn stands in a grove of fragrant fruit trees, the moon a silver coin above. His emerald eyes widen with joy, as his limbs tense to-

 _"WAIT!"_ Tulio shrieks out, so shrill the sound might as well be Celaeno's.

The illusion dissipates. The unicorn skitters, so close to burning his shining hide on that ruthless iron.

"I'm sorry," Tulio chokes out. "So, so sorry. I... I can't... I would've like that to be the spell that freed you."

The unicorn's eyes widen. "Don't give up," he pleas, small and weak. "D-Don't leave me here."

Tulio gulps back tears at that wild desperation. No. His first spell burned himself and his second might have injured the unicorn. He'll not risk their lives at a third attempt. Instead he quirks his lips into something like a smile when he brandishes his set of stolen keys. "Third time's the charm."

Because everyone's a critic, the enchanted lock jeers at him in Dama Fortuna's voice until he chokes it with the right key. Once it creaks open he disdainfully hurls it into the night, and shoves aside the door. "You're free, my friend, and - _oh."_

Imprisoned the unicorn had seemed small and tragic. Outside the bars he looms larger, glows like the moon. His laugh is like silver bells as he frolics around Tulio and the cage, kicking up his hooves like a gamboling foal. Tulio grins at the sight, soaking up every moment before the unicorn thanklessly charges into the woods. They are free things, without room for sorrow or sentiment.

The unicorn glides still before him. Tulio stares in slack-jawed wonder, hands limp at his sides. He instinctively flinches back when that long, tapered horn swings his way.

One heartbeat his hands burn hot, then icy cold, before utter bliss washes over him. With a sigh, Tulio opens his eyes. He gapes down at his hands, skin pink and new, then up at the unicorn. The unicorn raises his head and turns away. All the animals are awake now and staring silently at them, save for the sparrows.

The lock of the first cage silently falls as the unicorn touches his horn to it. The illusions fall away, as sphinxes and dragons and snowmen disappear. The beasts become proper beasts again. They do not acknowledge their savior. The old ape hobbles into the trees. The crocodile drags itself toward the distant river. The lioness and the old bear lumber off in different directions.

But not the sparrows. They huddle together, lost in their song, as the unicorn calls to them. "Freedom is better," he murmurs, too innocent to ever understand why some might prefer their prison. "It's a beautiful song, but it's not _yours._ "

"Magician!" Charming calls triumphantly. "You're losing your touch. I got that one in... no time..."

He stares. Tulio stares. So does the unicorn. They stand among empty cages, an idiot wizard watching a white horse urge a group of giggling sirens to freedom.

"Mother!" Charming roars, grasping at his empty side, for Tulio kicked his sword under a wagon hours ago. "Mother! We have ourselves a-"

Tulio tackles him. "Run!" he shouts. "Run, while-"

He's been in more of his fair share of bar fights over the years, but beneath his paunch Charming is still a strong and vicious fighter, with years of pent-up hatred for the hack magician that's swindled him out of his best keepsakes. Tulio chokes as iron fingers find his throat. He jabs a fist into the other man's chest, winning himself enough freedom to grapple back. His hand inches for his knife.

Then the wind begins. Tulio and Charming tumble apart as a lurid moon bursts out from the clouds. Shadows writhe under the moonlight, pulsing in time to the darkness churning inside the last locked cage. Celaeno laughs, the sound echoing from across the night, as the bars to its prison creak and groan. Tulio and Charming gape before its rising might.

The unicorn walks toward it.

"Are you _nuts?"_ Tulio's indignity is lost to the shrieking gale. He raises his voice louder, more terrified with every foolish step forward. "Run! Run while you can! It will kill you if you set it free!"

Even Celaeno does nothing to hide this fact. Its maw grins, wide and mocking, as the unicorn dips his head.

The door does not fly open. The walls do not burst apart. Before Celaeno's wrath the bars rust and crumble into nothing. From the dust the nightmare looms, larger and more terrible as its dark blots out the moon. The night shrieks.

"Oh!" the unicorn cries out in wonder. "You _are_ like me!"

_...What?_

The unicorn joyously rears up as the nightmare descends. His horn flares and the shadows pulse. The two revolve around the other, flailing hooves and tossing heads, as the moon and the night do battle. All Tulio can do is sit and gape. He is not mesmerized by their terrible beauty or an intricate spectacle that seems almost rehearsed, but too horrified the sheer stupidity on display before him to turn away.

The unicorn laughs in delight. The nightmare shrieks. It reels around him, behind him, where Dama Fortuna stands with open arms.

"Not alone!" she howls triumphantly. "You never could have freed yourselves alone. _I_ held you!"

The shadows swallow her, and Celaeno's eyes blaze red.

Tulio stumbles for the unicorn's side, tugging at that golden mane. "R-Run," he stammers out. "P-Please, you have to-"

"No," the unicorn tells him calmly. "Come with me."

He winds his numb fingers into that mane, and follows. Even when the nightmare's throaty rumble turns his legs to lead, he stumbles on, for his guiding light once more urges, "Come with me."

They do not run. The unicorn doesn't even trots. His steps are slow and measured, eyes always trained forward. Tulio only stares at the unicorn, who shines bright and unfailing as the moon. He does not turn back. Not even for the skidding of feet through bloody grass, the shriek of the shadows, and Charming's gargled scream.

"He ran," the unicorn informs him. "You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts our attention." His voice is distant and without pity, as if reciting something learned only at his dam's side. "Never run. Walk slowly, and pretend to think of something else."

So they flee, step by careful step.

* * *

Around dawn, Tulio can take no more. He collapses into the wet grass and wretches. "Those poor bastards," he croaks. "Those poor, poor bastards."

He's been around too long to weep for souls as unpleasant as Dama Fortuna and her Charming son. All his tears have dried up long ago. But that does not change the fact they had been people. People that had been devoured by the shadows and the things long buried deep down in their own minds.

The unicorn says nothing. Tulio stares at him. Through the gray morning rain he shines just as bright. The unicorn flicks a curious ear.

Tulio wearily bundles himself into his cloak. "You know that little voice people have... that tells them to quit when you're ahead? You don't have one."

The unicorn cocks his head. "Why would I?"

His companion snorts. "Fair enough." Unicorns are immortal and capable of healing their own fatal wounds. Why would they need basic survival instincts? "I suppose regret is also a foreign concept for you."

"I can sorrow," the unicorn answers, heartbeats later. "But it's not the same thing."

Tulio bites back his humorless laugh. "No. It really isn't."

For a time there is only the raindrops on his back. He expects the unicorn to drift off. When he squints up through his hood, he's still standing there, heedless of the mane plastered to his sodden back.

"Now what?"

"I was looking for _my_ people." The unicorn's eyes go wide. "Have you seen them, magician? They're wild and white and have horns like... well, me. They look like me."

Tulio scoffs. "I've never seen any like you while awake." _And now I'll see you in my nightmares, by the way._ "There were supposed to be a few unicorns left when I was little, but I only knew one person who'd ever seen one. Wherever they went, they're not here anymore. I look at you and know that much."

"No." The unicorn tosses his head. "For others have seen them. They're out there somewhere. A butterfly told me about the Obsidian Jaguar, and the witch about his priest. So now I need to find them. Do you know where I can find them?"

Tulio snorts. "That's easy. From what I hear El Dorado is a city of gold, honest to gods. Nice place, if you can make through the peoples on the border terrified of dealing with them. And the jungle that tends to devour people trying to find their way inside. If you reach El Dorado, it's ruled by a psycho priest named Tzekel-Kan. Then you have the personal honor of having your throat slit by him. He feeds people to the Obsidian Jaguar, by the way."

"And what _is_ the Obsidian Jaguar?"

"A god," Tulio deadpans. "Or near enough to make no difference. Only idiots use his real name carelessly. What matters is that a god of war and destruction. When he roams beyond El Dorado's borders, things are never good. So people throw tribute at Tzekel-Kan and the Jaguar stays put. Mostly. Tzekel-Kan belongs to the Obsidian Jaguar. The Obsidian Jaguar belongs to Tzekel-Kan. They've been bound so long no one knows the truth anymore."

Not even his own master had, though he'd near torn his beard out over the theories.

"Then I shall go there," the unicorn declares.

He sighs. "Of course you will."

"Are you coming too?" As Tulio gapes, the unicorn paws against the sodden ground. "Well, it's not as if you can head back to that awful place."

"I helped _capture_ you for that awful place!"

"Yes," he agrees mildly. "But then you freed me. And now you're my friend."

Tulio's eyes narrow. The unicorn blinks back. Tulio might call him lonely, if his reaction to Celaeno's vengeance has not proved him completely removed from human concepts of emotion and morality. One night the unicorn might decide to gore _him_ through on that horn if he gets too mouthy or accidentally gets mud over that pristine coat.

Tulio's gaze slides to the roads and what they lead to. He knows them all well enough. He's been thief and con artist and sideshow a dozen times over. Once more he considers the brand new path opened up before him, to the impossible things this unicorn might lead to.

"Partners," he blurts out. "If I'm in this, we're in this together."

"How so?"

"You take me with you," Tulio states bluntly. "Properly. No galloping ahead because you can't stand my pace or ditching me if I need to go to town once in a while to make myself a living. And I do what I can for you, like make sure no more random carnivals kidnap you. If they can't understand you anymore, I can get you what you need, and ask the directions you can't."

"What happens when we find the others?"

"Then our bargain is fulfilled. You find your people. I get up close with true magic and some nice fodder for my next run as a storyteller. That work for you?"

The unicorn bobs his head.

Tulio sticks out an insistent hand. "Shake on it."

The unicorn offers a hoof. "Partners?"

"Partners."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unicorns are intriguingly alien. And aloof. The wizard in the books had to beg the unicorn to tag along. Miguel is much younger. And desperate XD
> 
> Canon Tulio is cynical and set in his ways, because he thinks he knows what works for him. This Tulio has... been around the block a lot more times. So he's a bit more open when Unicorn!Miguel comes along begging for adventure.


	5. The Long Road

The unicorn has never had a traveling companion before, much less something as serious as a _partner._ Then again, he's never been captured before, or mistaken so egregiously for a horse.

It doesn't take long for Tulio to prove his usefulness. In their first afternoon together they hunker down in a thicket. The unicorn watches in fascination when, after much stomping and swearing in intriguing new words, Tulio kindles a fire. Not a raging wildfire, like those kindled by lightning or human carelessness, but a tame little flame that stays right where it should. Together they bask in the heat and let it dry them to the bone.

Tulio is so exhausted he snores through the rest of the day and through the night. The unicorn is anxious to once more travel in broad daylight. When he scents his first human, he nearly bolts off the road.

"Trust me," his partner murmurs. "It's gonna be fine."

The unicorn snorts dubiously, but continues striding at his side, ready to bolt at the first rope or halter to come his way. The old man they pass whistles in admiration. "Fine horse you got there."

"The finest," Tulio agrees. The unicorn snorts in grave offense. "But spirited."

"The best ones always are," sighs the old man wistfully. He spares them a final longing smile, and continues on his way.

The unicorn stares after him. "That's it, then?"

"That's it."

The unicorn glares suspiciously at his back. "I'm not ever gonna accept a rope, you know."

"I know."

"Don't ever expect me to become your beast of burden either, magician."

Tulio's lips quirk upward. "Would never dream of it."

The unicorn drinks in his features, committing them to heart as he has every last tree in his wood and family feature that show up in the generations of his beasts. "Though you are certainly fair enough to be worthy of a brief canter through the wood," he offers consolingly. "Maybe sometime later, when we find my people."

Tulio flushes red and splutters. He's mysteriously quiet for some time after that. Finally, he ventures, "Hey, is there anything you'd like me to call you?"

The unicorn swishes his tail. "Why? You're the only one who knows my true name as it is these days."

"Yes, but it's..." Tulio clears his throat. "Isn't there anything your mother ever called you, something special?"

"Little one." He smugly tosses his head. "But that doesn't exactly fit me anymore, does it?"

Blue eyes flick slightly downward, to the unicorn's eye level. "Well..."

The unicorn vaults forward, as if to pierce the sky. Tulio yelps and skitters away. The unicorn prances a circle around him, reminding him of the size of his presence, how his long horn rises far above his stupid human height.

"All right," Tulio wheezes at last. "You're not a little one." His eyes gentle. "But, seriously, is there anything you'd like to be called besides what you are?"

"I am a unicorn, and you know me as one." The unicorn makes a sound, small and bitter. "I may very well be the last, magician. There's no one left to mistake me for, is there?"

"Tulio." The unicorn blinks. The magician shrugs over his shoulder. "My name is Tulio. You can just call me that."

"Not even 'Tulio the Terrible?'"

He grimaces. "Especially not that."

"...All right, Tulio."

Tulio grins.

* * *

Travel is slower with a human partner. Tulio's steadiest pace is an idle stroll for a unicorn. He stops to rub at his sore feet or to barter with passerby. The unicorn, with nothing better to do than graze, watches in fascination, for this is his first chance to study human activity up close. More perplexing are the things the unicorn isn't allowed to watch. Tulio vehemently shoos him away whenever he needs to bathe or relieve himself.

...In hindsight, perhaps those are human things the unicorn should remain ignorant of.

"Why not get a horse?" the unicorn hazards one evening, while his partner grumbles over his aching soles.

"And grant you a rival for all the attention we get on the road? Never."

"Please," the unicorn scoffs. "Beside a mere horse I'll only look more magnificent in comparison. Your feet would trouble you less."

Tulio shakes his head. "It's not worth the hassle of stealing a horse, because I sure as hell don't have the money to afford one." He stares into the fire. "Besides I've already been there, done that. You get used to a horse and then they die on you. It... It got tiresome, after a while."

Horses are mortal. Most creatures are. The unicorn is unfamiliar with their minute details, like their lifespans. He hums in what Tulio interprets as understanding.

"I suppose we don't need a horse," the unicorn muses. "We might cover less ground a day, but they seem to have flown by."

His weeks before Tulio were filled with silent nights and people chasing after him with sugar cubes. Now he has a partner to know, stories that take his mind from the road. Tulio's tales eat up the morning. In return the unicorn can reminiscence on his forest, all the lovely features unique to his territory that made it superior to every other unicorn's. Hours fly by as they once did, before the unicorn gained such unpleasant familiarity with time.

Tulio's lips quirk. "Yeah, they do, don't they? We just finished up with your tortoises, right? Then let's move on to... turtles."

The unicorn rants about turtles, because the stupid hatchlings always try to make their homes in _his_ personal pool. His reflection most certainly does not need interruption from rude shells and bubbles. Tulio nods along until he actually nods off.

The unicorn marks his exact spot for tomorrow, for his kind has pristine memory for such things, then he too turns in.

Horses warily sleep standing up. Unicorns have no such fear. He curls up on the opposite side of the fire, to dream of his pool and all his obnoxious little turtles.

He will return to them.

He must.

* * *

Long before they crest the hill to gaze upon the town unfolding below, the unicorn's nostrils twitch at the chimney smoke. He pauses for a moment to admire the view, before Tulio stops for yet another breather.

The moment stretches on. The unicorn blinks as Tulio shrugs off his robe. The blue shirt and clothes beneath it are quite plain, nowhere near the grandiosity expected of any proper magician. Tulio folds up his robe. With a spell and much swearing, he persuades it into a smaller shape. He slips on the black vest.

"Much better," he sighs. "I was so sick of sweating to death."

Then he starts striding down the hill. The unicorn stares after him. When Tulio doesn't stop, he anxiously charges after him.

"Excuse me," he calls. "Excuse me, _what are you doing?"_

"Going into town. I'll be back by nightfall."

"Why?" the unicorn demands, side-eying every person they pass on the road. "We avoided the last one."

"Yeah, because you released a nightmare right outside the town over," Tulio drawls. "That's way too close. But now I'm out of rations, and not all of us can just stick our heads down and find dinner. There's only so much hard tack a man can eat before he goes mad."

"Looking like that? How can anyone take you seriously as a magician?"

"That's the point." Tulio gestures at his mundane appearance. "There were more wagon drivers in the Carnival than just Charming and Dama. Just because two most definitely met Celaeno doesn't mean the six others did. This close by, best no more sorcerers pop up." With a grin he fishes a pair of dice from his vest pocket. "Besides, I'm a man of many talents. I can't let my _actual_ skill set go to seed."

The unicorn sniffs at the dice. His partner always smells strongly of enchantment, but the dice only have his scent. "Are they even _magic_ dice?"

"Gods, no," Tulio scoffs, stowing his dice away. "If I believed in my magic I wouldn't be playing with loaded dice."

As the town looms, instinct and experience urge the unicorn away. He defiantly struts forward. Unicorns are not creatures of attachment, but even unicorn mothers are obligated to their young. The unicorn's own mother watched over him like a hawk, especially during those first days when he near charged over three separate cliffs and near-drowned in her pool because he thought his reflection a playmate. Now it must be some warped sense of the same instinct urges the unicorn to ensure Tulio, who is essentially a thick and two-legged foal, not be snatched up by humans or something.

Tulio side-eyes him, but now the people are pressed too close for him to talk back. The unicorn suctions himself to his side, glaring suspiciously at anyone who strays too close to his partner. Some people side-eye him back, shrug, and return to their own business. What's so odd about a man and his horse?

Tulio hones in on the town square. He buys something strange and steaming, wolfing it down. The extra apples he buys are shameless bribery. The unicorn accepts them all the same.

From the town square Tulio slips down a side street. He fixates on a dark alley teeming with men that have Dama Fortuna's hungry, appraising eyes. The unicorn's ears press back as their gazes fixate upon him. His partner only plops down and makes himself right at home.

With no other option now, the unicorn vigilantly stands guard over his shoulder, glaring daggers at any man who looks at him or Tulio wrong. All wind up guiltily averting their eyes. Even if they can't see the unicorn's horn he is more than capable of trampling them beneath his hooves. His blazing eyes promise them of this where his words cannot.

Tulio knows better than to ever heed the sneers urging him to put his 'colt' up as collateral. These fools wind up dropping early, when they can no longer endure the unicorn's murderous stare and scurry away like rats.

When the last gambler folds, the partners walk away together, Tulio cackling over his winnings. "I forgot what suckers people can be. I should've gone back into business _years_ ago." He grins wryly at the unicorn. "Then again, if I had I never would've met you."

"I'm glad you didn't," the unicorn agrees. "Celaeno might have killed me behind iron bars if were not there to free me."

Tulio pales. Then he stops and frowns down at his coins. "Are you, um, opposed to sleeping with a roof over your head for a change? Not an iron or enchanted one! Just... a normal, wooden roof."

The unicorn blinks. "I've never done that before, either."

"Is it something you'd wanna try? It'd be a stable, so you'd have to share with horses."

The unicorn considers this. He agrees.

The stable master is all too eager to take Tulio's coins. The unicorn is hardened enough against human ignorance to grudgingly tolerate the owner's effusive praise over 'that fine young stallion'. The horses stare at him in breathless awe. The unicorn basks in the reverence. Awaiting him is a bed of straw and sawdust. He gleefully sinks down into it. Of course, it's not the springy grass of his wood, but nothing outside has ever approached this level of comfort.

Tulio arches a brow, purposefully shoving the stall door all the way open. "Well? Is it worth the smell?"

The unicorn nestles deeper into the bed. "Very nice," he allows. "If you breathe lightly."

His partner grins. "Glad you found this humble place befitting of your divinity." He plops down right beside him, groaning in pleasure. "Oh, gods, so much better than the ground."

"Don't people sleep in beds?" the unicorn wonders.

Tulio snorts. "Hell if I'm paying extra."

The unicorn nods at this human wisdom, because it's a neat way of agreement he's also picked up from Tulio, and drifts off to sleep.

Despite the roof blotting out the stars and the walls encircling him, the unicorn does not dream of iron bars and dead-eyed nightmares. His surroundings are too pleasantly musty, his partner too warm a presence beside him, and Tulio's snores too familiar an ambiance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was some angst and heavy foreshadowing I was gonna stuff in here, but nah, let's make this travel montage a two-parter. Let's give our boys time to know each other first XD
> 
> Even the very old and traditional unicorn of the book is not above bedding down in a stable. Unicorn!Miguel is more than willing to make it a thing every town, if horse beds and apples are thrown in too.


	6. The Cautionary Tale

The unicorn fumes in his stall, quite peeved to be alone, save for the horses gaping in open wonder. At least this time he knows Tulio skulked off of his own free will. In the last town, the unicorn had startled awake to find himself alone. Thinking his partner kidnapped, the unicorn had stormed his way free of the stable. Tulio had narrowly stopped him from goring a man through. Many profuse apologies, and one failed spell as a distraction, Tulio had fled out of town with the unicorn cantering after him.

"Stupid human manners," the unicorn rants to his next door neighbor. "Not that I even know what _this_ particular stupid human thing actually is. Yet."

The sorrel mare blinks placidly back, then has the common sense to duck back into her oats. The unicorn sighs.

Pale morning light is filtering in through the dusty windows by the time his partner skulks back in. Tulio's hair is still wet from a bath. He smells overwhelmingly of lavender, but his clothes still carry the faint whiff of...

"Oh," the unicorn says.

Tulio snaps up straight, flushing beat red. "W-What do you mean _'oh_ '?"

"If you wanted to go off to mate, you could have just said so."

Tulio splutters false affront and vehement denials. They all fall silent under the unicorn's patient, nonplussed stare. He turns even redder as he looks away. "You're a _unicorn._ I... I thought you had a thing about purity."

"Purity of heart," the unicorn corrects. As the strange silence draws on, he continues, "Your discretion is very much appreciated. The rabbits in my wood are nowhere near as subtle."

Tulio buries his face in his hands and grumbles something indecipherable. His strange silence continues, so the unicorn happily rants on about his beech trees instead, because his partner makes a strange squeaking sound when he tries to explain how the rituals of some animals are affected by his eternal spring.

Over many more towns, Tulio never grows more graceful with his excuses, or comfortable enough to just spit out the truth. He slinks back each time smelling overwhelmingly of lavender or lilac or some other pungent herb. The unicorn stares knowingly at him. Tulio stares at the most convenient distraction and fusses with his shirt collar. Then the conversation carries on.

Then one day, out of the blue, Tulio unwittingly turns the tables on him.

"Does it take two unicorns to, y'know, make a baby unicorn?"

The unicorn primly swishes his tail. "We're not flowers, Tulio."

His partner's silence stretches into a question. The unicorn resolutely fills that gap by waxing poetic on his maple trees.

* * *

The unicorn cocks his head down at the playing cards. One gambler here has insisted on using her own deck. Tulio's set certainly doesn't have so many women, coy and winking and scantily dressed, inked on them. Despite the fascinating subject material, the numbers in their corners are still consistent. The unicorn might be the first in the world to read even a fraction.

"Her highest card is a nine, Tulio."

Sometimes being only understood by one person _is_ an advantage, when apples are on the line.

His partner slams down his hand and calls her bluff, grinning smugly. The woman stares back, cold and flinty. Then her gaze strays up. The unicorn blinks down at her.

"Did you train your horse to _signal_ you?"

Tulio pales at a stab too close to the truth. The woman unsheathes her blade. Around them, her crew rises menacingly.

The unicorn bugles. His horn comes stabbing down. For a second her sword shines like starlight, before it crumbles. The woman gapes up at him, eyes widening. That's all the distraction Tulio needs to spray out his playing cards. Then they become pudgy purple birds, flying and pecking into the faces of the gamblers. Tulio scrambles up, stuffing a mere handful of the pot down his vest.

The unicorn can easily leave him in the dust. Instead he charges forward just enough to clear a path, trumpeting and flailing his hooves so that Tulio can dart through his wake.

They barely escape town before they stumble across the next wanted poster.

"Huh," Tulio remarks, snatching it off the tree. "That's new."

The unicorn's eyes narrow at the second image that has joined his partner's. It is the sketching of a horse, certainly, for its face is far too crude to be anything else. It lacks both a horn and a proper beard. "Is that supposed to be _me_?"

"Of course not," Tulio assures, in the same tone that instead assures the unicorn it very much is. He sighs in dismay. "Guess it's back to the magic tricks."

"You should grow out a proper beard," the unicorn suggests. "Then you'd look the part."

"Ugh, no! Then I'd look _stereotypical._ Or, worse, like that satyr from the carnival. I can't pull off a beard to save my life."

"So shave what you have."

Tulio gasps in horror, clutching at his stubbly chin. "And ruin my _appeal?_ I'd rather the executioner!"

The unicorn squints. "What appeal?"

"You're a unicorn," his partner laments. "Of course you'd never understand."

"Understand what?"

"Can I trim your beard?"

The unicorn whinnies in horror, skipping back. _"Absolutely not!"_

Tulio nods sagely. "Ah. So you _do_ understand."

Really, the unicorn doesn't, but he lets the subject drop. He also sleeps with one eye open that night, just to ensure Tulio is not serious in his threat.

The unicorn's beard goes untouched. So too does Tulio's stubble.

* * *

When necessity drives them into town, Tulio unfolds his vest, and suffers under the guise of the humble hedge wizard. He mostly performs for children, though if a young mother or father shows up he ramps up his efforts. He never attempts anything bolder than making dolls talk or transforming soap into sweets (or at least deceptive, delicious-seeming soap.) Even these tricks sometimes fail, though he plays it off with his usual aplomb.

The unicorn is never officially considered part of the act. Tulio never ropes him into anything. He is a spectator with the audience, though one the children shamelessly gawk at it. If they are particularly adorable, and polite in their requests, the unicorn will occasionally deign let himself be stroked. He bolts right out of there when a child gets that _look_ in their eye. It takes Tulio hours to untangle those clumsy knots and braids from his golden mane.

Beyond paltry change, these people never throw anything monetarily Tulio's way. Their payment comes in supper or a sheltered place to lay his head for the night. His pockets are stuffed with crackers and cheese and apples.

By the time he reaches the horizon, and he can rip off that stifling robe, Tulio and his harmless tricks have faded from the town's collective memory. His striking white stallion lingers in their conversations. The youngest children will grow old insisting that colt was truly a unicorn, and never quite be convinced otherwise.

At times the unicorn feels tempted to linger in every last village. Obligation spurs him onward. Somewhere out there are his people. Somewhere out there is El Dorado, and the Obsidian Jaguar's dreadful presence.

Yet even the oldest and proudest unicorns hunger for spectacle. There is a reason the grand hunts of days gone by called them in with bells and riotous banners, when all other game in the world must be pursued through craftiness and stealth. Signs for fairs, or rumors on the road, or even music wafting up from a valley are too tempting to ignore. Where the unicorn is lured in like a moth to the flame, Tulio sighs and follows.

The unicorn adores it all, in their own ways. The drummers have their bombast and the dancers the silliness humans call grace. The horns and flutes sound almost traditional and proper for a unicorn's. But it's the string instruments he marvels out. Blessed with hooves, hands are a mystery to the unicorn as much as his horn is to Tulio. So the unicorn ventures forward to watch their fingers, enraptured by their deftness as he is by their songs.

Once in a very rare while, the unicorn is persuaded by an especially lively tune to show these people true dancing. He whirls and leaps across the square, for dancers and vendors always scramble to grant him room. His audience gapes like carp. Only Tulio has the audacity to laugh and join him, prancing around with his own unique flair. For some mysterious reason this always winds up with them being showered in coins.

Once the unicorn actually _wants_ to dance, for Tulio do his very best beside him. He waits all afternoon for inspiration, but the perfect song never strikes. He stamps a hoof in exasperation as twilight starts the musicians packing.

"Come on," Tulio murmurs. "It's getting dark."

Forlornly the unicorn follows. They wind their way through emptying streets until a sound, faint and strange, stops him in his tracks.

At first he thinks it the sound of something dying, a swan song, for the squares have always been filled with such happiness and noise. But this too is a song, sweet and bitter and sorrowful and emotions the unicorn can only guess at it. He shuffles his hooves in an anxious dance. He wants to run. He wants to impale his horn through its source and put it out of his misery.

He... He wants more.

Like a pale ghost, the unicorn drifts down the streets, his partner trailing nervously behind.

Hunched over on his stoop is a man. An _old_ man, with a clipped white beard and craggy face. His eyes are closed as his thick, gnarled fingers weave sorrow and things far sharper from his faded guitar. Such a wizened mortal should only inspire pity and revulsion in him, the same bone-deep avoidance all immortal things have to the reminders of how limited the rest of the world is. The unicorn stands stock still, so enthralled he almost feels his eternal vigor wither, his neck hang like a weary nag's.

The unicorn strides forward. He kneels, butting the guitar back to make enough room for his head.

Above him, the old man's breath hitches as he realizes exactly what rests in his lap. His fingers never stray toward him. Instead they curl around the guitar in a stranglehold.

The unicorn's eyes flicker toward his partner. Tulio has already slipped away. He is almost tempted to follow.

Instead he stays until the stars are clear and bright overhead. The unicorn even dozes for a bit.

Finally, the unicorn lifts his head. He is eye level with the old man, who cannot bring himself to look away.

Gently, the unicorn brings his horn down to those artful hands.

The man does not grow young again. His hair does not darken and his wrinkles do not recede. Yet he stands straighter, and his hands uncurl as they have not in years, as time takes back the sharpest of its tolls. He weeps like a newborn as the unicorn stands and bounds away into the night.

He finds Tulio just outside of town, a fire blazing against the dark. The unicorn settles down opposite. His partner's face is impassive.

"Are you angry?"

"No." Tulio chucks a piece of wood into the flames.

The unicorn considers stranger emotions. "Are you jealous of him?"

"No." A pause "Not because of you."

Tulio does not elaborate, no matter how many minutes the unicorn lets the minutes drag by. His head whirls with the mystery. "How old was that man?"

The man snaps a twig. "Old."

"Yes, but _how_ old? Approximately speaking."

"No idea." Tulio hurls the twig into the flames. He then relents, "I lost track."

The unicorn hopefully considers his partner's own youthful face, far younger than that old hunter recounting his great-grandmother. If someone as young as Tulio knew one who had personally seen a unicorn, then they cannot be anything more than recently vanished.

"How old are you?"

Tulio shrugs.

Fair enough. The unicorn has no idea about himself. He knows only that he is young for his kind, that not even trees can compete with a potentially endless span of centuries.

"What of the one you knew?" the unicorn presses. "The one who saw a unicorn?"

Tulio blinks, returning to himself. "His name was Hermes. Hermes Trismegistus. He was the great sort of magician who could make a name like that sound respectable, dignified. Once, in the woods, he beheld a unicorn sleeping in... Well, you know how your kind is... lethally hunted?"

"Yes," he whispers.

His mother had warned him of human treachery. Maidens, young and fair, are the bait. They sit in the deep woods, embroidering and singing songs to lure in any curious unicorn. Once that unwary unicorn is slumbering, archers emerge from the woods. They strike from a distance, without ever giving the unicorn a chance to fight back.

Unicorns are not slaughtered for their meat. That much the unicorn understands, for his woods too have predators. Those wicked enough to taste unicorn blood, let alone feast upon such blessed flesh, are cursed forever. They live short and miserable half-lives, until they wither away. No. The hunters only saw off their horns, to cure kings too old and bitter to ever have a unicorn heal them willingly.

"The unicorn was already sleeping in some virgin's lap, three hunters drawing in. Hermes Trismegistus only had a moment to act. He changed the unicorn into a young man. He awoke to his killers gaping at him. The young man charged and killed them all, for he had a sword, twisted and tapered like his horn. Then he trampled their bodies when they were dead." Tulio cants his head. "To be fair, I'd have probably done the same in that situation."

Thoughts tumble in the unicorn's head. He first blurts out, "What about the girl? Did he kill her too?"

"Turns out the girl wanted her cut of the gold to escape her shitty village. The rampaging unicorn gave Hermes the excuse to help her fake her death and start a new life somewhere else." Tulio taps his chin. "I think she became a pirate queen or something."

"And the unicorn? Surely Hermes Trismesgistus changed him back."

Tulio smiles bitterly. "Oddly enough, this was the _one_ spell of his Hermes Trismesgistus could never undo. Then and always, the unicorn was a man. He traveled for a time as a monster hunter, for slaying dragons and wicked beasts were already part of his repertoire. He wound up settling down with another veteran. He died old and respected - of a surfeit of violets, if I remember right. He never got over eating violets."

The story sticks in the unicorn's throat, near chokes him. "Your magician did not save that unicorn," he rasps. "He only prolonged his suffering."

His partner shrugs. "In hindsight, Hermes reckoned he should have just turned those hunters into hoopoes, or swapped out the unicorn for a beast more capable of fighting back. But he had a split second to react, and he chose the path that granted that unicorn fifty more years of love and adventure. Even those years would have been lost, if Hermes had acted a heartbeat later."

The unicorn is possessed by the need to stand. He does, grinding his hooves into the earth. "If some other wizard thought to protect my people like _that,_ I-I'd.... I'd rather the Obsidian Jaguar have taken them. At least then they would have gone as themselves."

Tulio stares into the fire, and lets it gutter out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Pure of heart' is up to interpretation, ain't it? :p
> 
> The book unicorn had a thing about actually letting her wizard touch her, 'cause maleness or something. Miguel ain't so choosy :p 
> 
> Hermes Trismegistus is the 'real' founder of alchemy and a bunch of other cryptic art and magic and stuff. This is a Plot Point. His story of the unicorn is a remix of the book tale where Schmendrick the Magician recounts the story of Nikos - who transformed a unicorn to save his life, but could not turn him back. That unicorn just settled down and married the virgin that almost killed him, for some reason. These versions went their own paths.


	7. The Magic Unleashed

The seaside town is large and sprawling, the closest thing to a city Tulio has seen in ages. Beyond the town unfolds the sea, sparkling in the sun as sailing ships come in and out. Even as it looms on the horizon, the unicorn trembles in dread and also that terrible curiosity that Tulio himself has learned to dread. Rescuing a hapless magical creature from grabby infants and getting his horn caught peering into windows is _not_ part of the deal.

"No," he deadpans.

"But-"

"Not gonna happen."

"I'm-"

"I'm grimy," Tulio butts in. "And tired and could really, _really_ use a drink."

This time the unicorn does not naively point out the stream flowing down the hillside. "Ah," he says, in meek understanding.

Yes, alcohol is technically poison. But it's the _fun_ kind, at least until the hangover kicks in. The first time Tulio tried a tavern break on this quest, the unicorn had immediately healed him. Those pure intentions had cost Tulio the coin spent on decent wine.

"I'll certainly appreciate the help the morning after," Tulio assures. "Really. But there's _more_ I wanna do tonight than the drinking."

"I know," the unicorn says plainly, because of course he does.

"So I'm not gonna have the head needed to hold up my end of the bargain. Right now, the safest way to keep you out of danger is to _not_ let you be in the middle of it." Tulio arches a stern brow. "Also, I learned to never leave you unattended in a stable ever again. Those horses were still striking when we got out of there."

"It's not my fault their humans were working them too hard for too little oats!"

Tulio pinches the bridge of his nose. "Please promise me I won't need to bust you out of a lord's stable again."

"As if that fool could actually have held me!"

"Which means no wandering town unattended like you're some random wild horse up for the taking."

The unicorn remains sullenly silent. Tulio stares at him. "I promise," he relents.

"And I promise to bring you back something delicious, partner," Tulio soothes. "Something you've never tasted before."

"All right, all right." The unicorn sticks up his nose as he finally prances off the road for a more sheltered copse. He purposefully lingers, emerald eyes wide and pleading. For a moment Tulio almost caves.

After days on the road beside immortal brilliance, sex and alcohol are still more appealing.

Coming into town with the unicorn is both relaxing and disappointing, for Tulio has grown so used to his wide-eyed awe over the most mundane things, like fountains and bread bakers. He immediately heads down for the docks for the nearest winesink. Inhaling that aroma of dead fish, sour wine, and body odor is almost like coming home. Tulio stakes his spot by the bar and starts looking for marks. His dice only come out briefly, to pay their way through his first rounds. Moneymaking is not the endgame tonight.

After a few false starts, Tulio makes some progress with a pretty blond. They laugh and tease and suggestively bat lashes over a shared bottle of the second-crappiest wine the place has to offer. Tulio progresses from mildly tipsy into the right sort of drunk, where he's lost enough inhibition to really turn on the charm but still has enough control to not turn into a walking disaster. Yet more drinks later, he's on his tipping point and still trying to persuade that blond away when trouble enters.

Tulio immediately wrinkles his nose as a whole damn crew, fresh off the boat, saunter their way inside. The easy atmosphere of the bar shifts, as the patrons eye them and the crew grins right back. Like a wolf pack the sailors move their way forward.

Tulio's eyes narrow at their leader, big and broad-shouldered and brazenly shirtless. How is he supposed to compete with that?

"Um," squeaks the blond, eyes wide. "I think it's time for me to go."

"Why?" drawls Tulio, a tad too loudly. "Their smell adds to the ambiance."

The bar goes very, very quiet. The blond mumbles some excuse about needing to water his cat and scurries away.

The well-muscled, flint-eyed leader pushes his way to his side. "Sorry, stranger," he says calmly. "I don't believe the crew caught that."

"Their smell adds to the ambiance," Tulio repeats, louder. He gropes for the wine bottle that's now all his own. He squints at his shaky hand and decides not to risk pouring it again into his cup. "I think they should've quarantined your ship longer. I've never seen a disease that makes people deaf and deathly allergic to shirts before."

He whines in protest when the leader rudely snatches the bottle from his hand. "Go home, stranger. I think you've had enough."

Tulio squints at those godly arms and dizzily weighs his odds. "Be not forgetful to... entertain strangers... for you may have... entertained... entertained..."

"Angels unawares?" pipes up one of the crew, small and hairy.

"No." Tulio shakes his head emphatically. "That's not it."

Some of the crew offer more suggestions, each wronger than the last.

"I would consider who started this," interrupts their leader, "and hope you have angels on _your_ side."

Tulio staggers his way out of his stool. "I am Tulio the Terrible, and I make a bad enemy. I am older than I look and less... less amorous than I appear. Less admist I appeal? Er, less friendly than I look."

"Sure you are," agrees the man, in that mocking tone that Tulio knows all too well, that seared into his very bones.

His blood boils.

He speaks a spell, and punishes these foolish sailors for their transgression.

* * *

Tulio is kidnapped by pirates. He sulks the whole way he's carried out of town like a sack of meat, to some isolated cove nearby, because this crew is both cheap enough to not pay the docking fees and too smart to bring a wanted ship into a lawful harbor. At the blades the men brandish, the passerby avert their eyes and go about their business. Funny how these days they seem blind to men in apparent mortal peril as they are to unicorns.

"What times we live in, huh?" he grouses to the guy hauling him, but he can only mumble through the nasty rag stuffed into his mouth.

Unfortunately, the shirtless and sensible beefcake is not this crew's captain. That honor belongs to the biggest asshole on board.

"Kale!" the beautiful bastard says brightly. "You didn't need to bring me dessert!"

Tulio's glare should fry those stupid eyebrows off. He has _standards,_ thank you!

"A wizard, actually," Kale answers. "Though not a very good one."

"He tried to turn us into seagulls!" a pirate chimes in.

Tulio thinks they'd make a great flock. They're already loud and foul as it is.

Their captain snorts. "Clearly you all got better."

"Kale grabbed a wine bottle from him!" chirrups another. "Then it became a seagull instead."

Which could at least have worked as a distraction, if that gull had pecked at the right man's eyes. Instead it had flown right into Tulio's face to betray the man who gave it life.

Their captain guffaws at the story, and again as Tulio simmers. "That's great. So why bring him back with you?"

"...Doesn't a wizard owe us three wishes if you catch him?" wonders a sailor.

"Those are djinn, Rat."

"Huh."

Gagged, Tulio cannot lecture these idiots on a magician's true worth. Instead he has to suffer through their bickering on his possible usefulness in conjuring them loot or in serving as a handy compass to buried treasure. Eventually they decide he's too much of a risk aboard Captain Sinbad's precious ship. This is how they all wind up back ashore, Sinbad's slavering mastiff panting at Tulio's legs, and the rag finally wrenched out of his mouth.

"Well, 'Tulio the Terrible?'" Sinbad asks as he wretches from that gods awful taste. "Anything you'd like to contribute to this conversation?"

"I can point the way to three different dragon hoards," he deadpans. They're always in need of more toothpicks.

"What kind of hoards?" one pirate asks immediately.

Before Tulio can spin a proper tale to make these idiots blind in their greed, a voice of common sense kills the mood. "Don't let him bait you, Lin." Tulio's gaze flicks to generous curves, thick black hair, and eyes that see right through him. He allows himself a moment to slacken in awe. Before he can muster up a proper defense, her jeer once more cuts over him. "He's a con artist, Sinbad. Just look at him. Slit his gizzard and be done with it."

Tulio shivers. It is not entirely from dread.

"I am Tulio the Terrible," he declares, posturing as grandly as he can with unkempt hair and scratches from a very angry seagull. "Are you truly the notorious Sinbad, the most fearless and ferocious pirate to ever sail the seven seas?"

A few of the crew exchange glances. Sinbad puffs up. The woman groans. "Oh, just _gut him_ already!"

"When I want your advice, Chel, I'll take it!" the idiot huffs. "Tulio the Terrible is a guest, and a magical one at that. Why don't you gone thin up the soul for one more bowl tonight?"

She spits at his feet. Sinbad laughs.

"Allow me, signorina," Rat demurs, seizing his chance to escape.

"Thank gods," murmurs another. "Can't trust her with water."

Chel sweetly assures him she's already improved upon his secret stash of whiskey.

"Don't mind her," Sinbad scoffs, as two of his crew so helpfully push Tulio down into his brand new spot by the fire. "Behind every great captain is a woman in every port, and occasionally one so stunning you just have to take her along." He winks. "Until the welcome wears thin."

Tulio wisely ignores this conversation by instead regurgitating every great treasure trove he has ever heard of, real or otherwise. To prove their truth he resorts to those tricks drilled into him by the Carnival. He spits out diamonds from the floor of the Curdled Sea, though they are glass, and from his pockets draws forth something that is either the truly Holy Grail or else a humble wooden mazer bowl.

Despite their rudeness, Sinbad's crew are the ideal audience. They marvel his ears full of replica coins and make the appropriate awed gasps for his tale of the dragon Fafnir. Offering no true magic, Tulio knows he sparks no true magic in them. He tries and fails to conjure something from that dread dragon's hoard, and produces only a buzzing red dragonfly. They applaud just as dutifully.

Sinbad twitches impatiently. Kale's eyes watch only him, waiting for the silent signal that will be an unceremonious blade through Tulio's neck. It is Chel who shocks him. She had first listened in faint interest. He has teased a rare smile from her. Now her restless eyes, dark and deep, reflect only disappointment.

These days his loath self-loathing is almost always on a slow and constant simmer. Now the old rage flares hot and bright. Tulio laughs, mad and fierce. He drops the brass goose eggs he juggles, lets go all his hated tricks, and shuts his eyes in surrender.

"Do as you will," he murmurs to the magic. "Do as you will."

It begins as a sigh through his bones. His heart fills to burst. Something commands his body more surely than he has ever had. It speaks with his voice, deep and commanding. He sinks to his knees, weak with power, and waits to return to himself.

Tulio wrenches open his eyes. The crew jeer mockingly. Sinbad is past any such amusement, dark and brewing. His dog whines, tail tucked low. Chel stares past them all, eyes wide and shimmering. At her cry they all whirl to the sea, to gaze upon what she sees.

One by one, the ships glide past on waters smooth as glass, with full sails despite the meager wind. The fleet has journeyed across seas and centuries, to pass this humble shore by. Odysseus turns his rudder to sail for his old home and Aeneas to find a new one. The Golden Fleece shines like a second sun from the Argo's mast. Bran sails eternally beside a baghlah. Both are dwarfed beneath the imperial treasure ship. Their crews swarm rigging and row at oars. They order and talk and laugh without sound.

One ship, the smallest of them, sails under its own power. Its only occupants are two shining men, smiling benevolently ahead. Their hull is red streaked lined in gold, their prow carved like a stylized serpent.

"Illusions," Sinbad croaks, as a blue-sailed ship helmed by a princely man passes. "Guys, they're not-"

Chel calls above him. Rat and Lin and all the others join her, scrambling down the shore in the wake of that fantastic fleet, summoned from the deepest depths of their hearts. So wild are their hearts, and wild their loss, they neglect the very real ship bobbing right off shore.

"C'mon, men!" Sinbad shouts after them. "You're on _foot!"_ He turns to Kale, the only soul, aside from the dog, not to have deserted him. "Should we go after them?"

His second sighs. "They'll be back by morning, sore and ashamed of themselves. Like pretty much every night in port goes anyway."

Tulio, laughing uproariously at what the magic has wrought through him, forgets that this is the part where he should have bolted for it.

Above him, Sinbad and Kale glance at each other.

In one synchronized moment their swords come swinging down.

And shatter.

Tulio howls louder.

"Nice try, boys!"

As if old Hermes hadn't made his spells idiot proof.

After a moment to reconsider their plan, the pirates gag Tulio and haul him out into the far forest. They use their thickest, strongest roots to lash him firmly to the sturdiest tree in the area. Then they leave him there. As Kale takes care to cover their tracks, Tulio knows himself abandoned there.

Well. All right then.

Sighing out through his nose, Tulio starts patiently working his jaw to loosen the gag.

He's really lost count of how often this has happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why, yes, I am sure that is the last we have seen of Chel ; ) Dreamworks Sinbad is an ass, but he is a smooth-talking ass easy on the eyes, and with a crew she actually quite liked. It would not surprise me she'd fall into that sort of crowd if she didn't have her idiots to scoop up instead.
> 
> In the book and the movie Schmendrick the Magician blunders his way into a bunch of Robin Hood knockoff, and the wild magic he channels summons the 'real deal.' Here Tulio taps beyond the surface materialism of Sinbad's crew for the dreams that inspired them to go to sea in the first place - the great voyagers that came before, for home or new lands or adventure or for the sheer love of the sea. Sinbad's crew see the classical ships and archetypes that inspired their classical adventures. Chel sees the Dual Gods as she has always seen them. And even Sinbad is tempted, though too cynical to take it. Not yet, anyway, because who's to say his ship didn't run into Proteus and the Book of Peace after this?
> 
> Tulio's condition was supposed to wait a few more chapters for the full reveal, but Sinbad and Kale have the common sense to just try finishing the bastard off. The dimension it added to Schmendrick's character in the books is what made really want to glom it only Tulio instead. And, given Tulio's nature, that an immortality spell on him indeed be 'idiot proof.'


	8. The Partner-in-Training

Typical for Tulio, the magic that possessed him for one glorious moment has fled quick as it came. Of course it did. It always does. Once he spits out his gag, Tulio tries for more conventional spells, in the vain hope they might backfire in a way still useful to him. Instead he winds up being slowly suffocated by an amorous tree. All right then.

The ropes go slack when he grits his teeth and lunges against them. At first he thinks his mentor's magic has kicked in once more. Instead, as the world stops spinning, the silver swirl of the unicorn manifests into his full brilliance.

"You never came," the unicorn scolds, "and I see you never found me something new to taste either."

"Sorry," Tulio wheezes out. "The angry pirates were a surprise."

Once more that shining horn touches him and the aches untouched by his own curse fall away. Tulio sits up with a thankful sigh. He glares at the tree that had declared they would be together in death, but now it stands as inert as its neighbors. He skitters away all the same, to the opposite of the unicorn.

Though it is still night in the east the sky is paling with a new dawn. The night birds and insects die down. In the lull between times, Tulio can only hear himself blundering through the wood, for the unicorn moves too gracefully to even disturb the leaves.

"Did you see me?" he blurts out. "Did you see what I made?"

"Yes," the unicorn breathes. "It was true magic."

The unicorn's truth sticks in his throat as a bitter chuckle. They've traveled together so long now that Tulio forgets that long and terrible time before him. After all this time, all the tricks the unicorn has watched him perform, all the spells he's witnessed failed, only this he can call magic. "It's gone now," Tulio bites out. "I had it - no, it had me. But it's gone now. I couldn't hold it."

"Hello."

Tulio freezes. He whirls to see Chel leaning against a tree. Her rich black hair is tangled and crusted in sand. Her tattered dress is stained in salt. Her feet and knees and palms are still bleeding, from that frantic chase down a ruthless shore. Her eyes are ruthless as her grin.

Tulio clears his throat, drawing himself up with every inch of his average height. "Depart, woman, before I strike you with a lightning bolt!"

Chel's biting remark dies in her throat, for the unicorn makes no motion to fade back into the forest. Chel stands rigidly stone but for the tears welling in her eyes. For an eternity they all stand as statues. Then Chel bunches her ragged skirt in her raw hands and bends her knees. The unicorn stares.

Belatedly Tulio realizes Chel is curtsying. He laughs, for the only other option seems to weep.

Chel springs up. "Where have you been?" she cries. "Damn you, where have you been?" She stalked a few steps forward, toward Tulio, but it was beyond him she looked. To the unicorn.

"Hey! You don't get to talk to him like that!"

Chel shoves past him. She strides right up to the unicorn, scolding him like he's a child that dared wander off under her nose. _"Where have you been?"_

She looms large and terrible with her rage. Before those emerald eyes and shimmering horn, Chel gutters out, and steeps in her unworthiness. But the unicorn only bends his head to her eye level.

"I am here now," he murmurs.

Chel laughs, sharp and biting. In that moment she sounds centuries older than Tulio, then the unicorn himself. "And what good is is to me that you're here now? Where were you for my grandmother, for my mother? How dare you, _how dare you come to me now,_ when they're all **_gone_** _!"_ She clutches at her empty heart, the tears falling like rain. "I wish you'd never come. Now, why now?"

The unicorn scuffs a hoof. His muscles twitch as if he wants to turn away, but Chel rivets him there.

"He is the last," Tulio answers for him, "the last unicorn in all the world."

"You would be." Chel sniffs. "It would be the last unicorn in the world that came to me." She lifts a hand to lay on the unicorn's cheek. They both flinch. Neither shies away, as Chel comes to rest upon his bearded chin. "It's all right. I forgive you."

"What?" Tulio splutters, indignant beyond belief at that uninitiated touch. Even when the unicorn had fretted over the tangles children knotted into his mane, he always seeks permission to brush them out. Bile rises up in his throat when the unicorn quietly heals her wounds with the slightest touch, as he has just healed Tulio's. "H-He's a _unicorn._ Unicorns aren't forgiven! We grovel for what they give us!"

Chel strokes the unicorn's swan-like neck. She wipes her tears in his golden mane. Despite his vanity, he does not wrench away. "I don't think you know much about unicorns."

Tulio clenches his fists. The sky grays and the trees come lurching out of the shadows. He pointedly looks the unicorn in the eye, ignoring the thief clinging to him like a lifeline. "Come on," he urges. "We have places to be."

Chel's eyes narrow at his tone. "Who's 'we?'"

"Me and Tulio," the unicorn answers at once, to his partner's grinning delight. "We're partners."

"I want in," Chel blurts out.

"In?" the unicorn wonders, before Tulio can deliver a flat refusal.

"On your quest."

"There's no quest! Why would you think there's a-" Tulio trails off. Really, what other plausible excuse is there for a unicorn and a magician to be traveling together at the ass end of the world? His eyes narrow, as he recalls all those pirates that might be skulking around these woods. "Why?"

Chel wants out of the idiots she hitched a ride with. Given the quality of their captain, Tulio grudgingly understands this. The unicorn nods sagely as if he understands why she wants in to get out. They both know he does not.

"Y-You don't even know where we're going!"

Chel glares right back. "Think you're the only one who dreams of better things? Of adventure? You've got your reasons, and I have mine. Let's not make it personal, okay?"

"El Dorado," Tulio grits out. "To find the Obsidian Jaguar."

Chel does not shiver like one who grew up on the tale. She shudders with true fear. When the unicorn finds her side, she clings to him. He breathes into her cupped hand. A new smile, fierce and unshakable, unfurls across her face. "In that case, you're definitely gonna need my help."

"I am Tulio the Trickster!" Tulio exclaims grandly, gesturing at himself and then his partner. "And he's a unicorn that sets nightmares free and then fights them because he's just like that. "What makes you think we need _your_ help?"

Chel mockingly repeats his pose from earlier. "'Lightning bolt,' really? You'd electrocute yourself first. So I'm going with you, to make sure you don't accidentally shock the last unicorn instead."

"No!" Tulio shouts, as the unicorn watches their verbal volley. "Don't think so!"

"All right," Chel sniffs, sauntering away from the unicorn to approach him instead. "I'm sure a magician as wise as you must know more about _Manoa_ than I ever could. I'm sure you know the proper rituals for appeasing the Jaguar God, the holiest and bloodiest days on the calendar - oh, and of course, all about Xibalba. Okay? Good luck." Chel pinches his cheek. Tulio's hand flies up to the spot in utter bewilderment. Then he ogles the swing of her hips as she strides away. "Can't wait to hear the stories about your gruesome demise."

"Wait!" he shouts after her. "Would you hold it?"

Chel eagerly whirls around with an outstretched hand. "Deal?"

The unicorn, recognizing this reference, happily sticks out his hoof. "Deal."

Tulio firmly slaps it down. "Not yet. Let's just see how this works out."

"Uh-huh. Well, then I suppose you'll be wanting these back?"

Tulio splutters as she offers up his own weighted dice, slapping at his empty vest. "H-How'd you get those?"

The unicorn wondrously eyes her minimal hiding places. "Where were you keeping them?"

"Call me Chel, your new partner!"

Tulio snootily corrects her as a partner-in-training. He stalks off to lead the way.

"You're going the wrong way!" Chel, his _partner-in-training,_ calls after him.

Tulio grits his teeth, and listens because the unicorn does.

They walk side by side, even if it's awkward in the thick forest, for neither is loathe to stray from the unicorn or trail behind to stare after his tufted tail. The unicorn is an oblivious barrier between them. Tulio's eye twitches at every innocuous question directed at Chel, for they are the same introductions the unicorn once made with him.

At least it spares him the trouble of small talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always love twisting the relationship dynamic by making Tulio the jealous one for a change. Not that Unicorn!Miguel realizes anything that's going on right now XD


	9. The Green-Eyed Problem

Hours ago, Chel chased after the barge of the Dual Gods, real as they'd been when they raised the Fifth World from the ruins of the last. They had been her beginning, a chance to once more make new all the Jaguar God has destroyed. She had fallen and bled for that impossibility, until she had realized the hunt would never end.  
  
So she had stopped, while Rat and Lin and all the others crashed into the dark, shouting after great heroes and voyagers they have been chasing since boyhood. Sinbad had known better than to run, and Kale had known to listen.  
  
By now, in the sober light of morning, the last crew must be limping wearily back to the ship. Chel wishes them the best. They had always been kind to her, and had grown kinder as Sinbad's restless heart drove him from her.  
  
Sinbad and his crew sail on, for easy money and the adventure that will always elude them.

The unicorn does not evaporate in broad daylight. His mane shines like the sun and his coat like silver. On the road his cloven hooves move light as snowfall. Chel walks close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him, to inhale a sweet smell unlike any beast she's known before. Sometimes she fears him an illusion. Then she'll shyly reach out to stroke a reverent hand through his mane, or to brush her shoulder against his side. The unicorn never shies away.

Chel expects the day to pass in silence, beyond what personal information she offers up to the unicorn. She's certainly right that Tulio sulks, eyes on the road or glaring at her if she dares touch the unicorn where he will not. She expects the unicorn to speak no more, to simply drink in her presence as he has untold people and the untold centuries before her.

Instead the unicorn fills every moment when he does not wait for her to answer. He craves to know everything about her past she's willing to volunteer, so Chel tells him of the good days, of her parents and grandparents and big brother. In return he reminisces about his forest and all the times his mother saved his tail from accidental death as foal. Then it turns out the unicorn has very opinionated tastes on music and a fondness for the guitar. Tulio's taught him how to read a fair bit. And, less surprisingly, unwittingly made an accomplice to multiple crimes over their travels.

Chel nods at these revelations, her smile slipping into wonder. She always thought unicorns timeless, old as the sea and young as the morning. The last unicorn, who has survived where all the others have vanished, should be especially wild and wary.

This unicorn just sounds _young._ Chel has a sneaking suspicion she's older than him mentally, though her mind shrieks at the impossibility of it all.

Then again, she's traveling with a unicorn and a paradoxical wizard. She hails from a city created by the gods and long terrorized by one in turn.

As the first day winds on, the magic of her situation wears thin for Chel to realize her bare feet are killing her. Cooped up at sea for weeks on end, she's forgotten how much a pain walking can be. Her meager belongings are still in that bastard's cabin or else thoughtlessly tossed overboard by now. Ugh. Her stomach growls at the reminder she's only plucked fruits from the roadside as her lunch and breakfast.

Chel's feet near weep in relief when Tulio finally turns off the roadside. The unicorn grazes as he starts up a fire. Once done, the magician kicks back, pulling a surprising amount of food from his flimsy vest. Right. Magician. Chel's stomach rumbles.

Tulio pauses, an entire wedge of cheese inches from his open mouth. His blue eyes flick from Chel to the unicorn, who has raised his head from the grass. Tulio grumbles, snaps his cheese, and tosses half in Chel's direction.

She deftly catches it. "Thank you."

Tulio shrugs, burying himself in crackers. Chel gets a fair share of this too.

Night brings enough of a chill for Chel to huddle closer to the flames, because her dress is a tattered mess after that run down the beach.

Tulio stands, shrugging off his vest. It falls into his arms as a shabby black cloak more befitting his profession. He drops it over her shoulders.

"Here," he mutters, scurrying back to his side of the fire. "This way our partner won't need to revive an icicle tomorrow."

The unicorn whinnies scoldingly. "Tulio, we left ice and snow behind long ago. Though I still don't understand why humans live practically everywhere these days when you're practically hairless."

Chel's lips quirk up. "Are humans that big a mystery to you?"

"I'll say," the unicorn lightly huffs. "I've been traveling with Tulio for ages now, and every day seems to raise more questions than they solve."

Chel giggles. "Maybe that says more about your choice of company so far than humans in general."

"Hey!" Tulio butts in. "Our partner, gods bless him, has spent eternity isolated in the woods. Everything outside it is alien to him. He was mystified by the concept all people have actual names. Explaining basic bartering to him was like teaching a cucumber basic alchemy."

"Excuse me!" whinnies the unicorn. "There's so many humans running around these days you'd all go mad without special names to tell each other apart. But I still don't understand why those gold coins are worth more than the others. Silver and copper are also pulled from the earth, and shine just as well when polished."

This is how a unicorn and a wizard bicker over arbitrary human value. Chel is at first enraptured by the absurd spectacle. Then her lips quirk up at the cadence of the discussion, the banter not unlike what she witnessed among Sinbad's crew. There is fond exasperation in their voices, and a teasing lilt to the unicorn's alleged ignorance. Her parents and grandparents once sounded the same.

Blue eyes turn to her, green following suit. "Speaking of mysteries, how did someone like you wind up with a crew like _that?_ " Tulio pauses. "Er, aside from the obvious reason."

Chel rolls her eyes. "Kale and the crew are pirates, but they're all good men. I'd have wound up jumping ship or slitting their throats in their sleep if they weren't." She stares purposefully at Tulio. "Men like that don't follow a bad captain so faithfully. Sinbad... is someone a lot more complicated than that."

"Ah," Tulio sighs knowingly. "One of those."

"...Yes," chimes in the unicorn, utterly mystified.

Sinbad can be a good man, a caring man, one that can see a woman that's just outrun death himself and only offer her a safe place to lay her head. For Chel, who had passed so close to the Jaguar God that his meaty breath will linger in her nightmares forever, Sinbad and his ship had seemed the answer to all her prayers. Here was adventure on the high seas and someone to share it all with.

Those first weeks, away from Manoa and all its horrors, had been bliss.

Then Sinbad's restlessness had resurfaced. Noble parties ripe for the thieving and galleons laden with treasure always urge him onward. In close quarters aboard, Chel had come to find his constant boasting ear-grating, almost as much as his jealous insistence that women could never be trusted onboard a ship. Chel had been manning the rigging and performing her share of the work within that first week.

He was the sort of man that pushed himself to be heartless, for he saw it as the only way for his true desires. Only even Chel knew they had been bullshit, for Sinbad's eyes grew wide whenever news of Syracuse and its noble Prince Proteus reached their waters. What he had left behind there could not be found with Chel. What Chel wanted could not be wrenched from his half-torn heart.

"I needed to get in to get out," she surmises dryly. "And then I needed to get out from my out."

Really, even the hate sex had just been pitiful by then.

Tulio laughs. "Same here, actually. Then that old hag decided to capture the random unicorn on the roadside."

"I just needed to get out," the unicorn answers simply. "Because of you, I did."

Tulio splutters and bites back an idiot grin. Even in the firelight, Chel can tell his blush.

Her heart melts.

* * *

At the closest human settlement, Tulio is resolved to get his robe back. He does not trust his magic to create any suitable attire for Chel. She deserves trustworthy clothing that will permanently stay clothing, that will never feel the urge to dance away at the right song or turn into mice at the stroke of midnight. Yeah. There's a reason why Tulio reserves his magic for that robe alone, still dependable from all those long years it had aided Hermes Trismegistus.

They spend near the whole damn day at that town's humble clothing store. The unicorn, mesmerized by the endless colors and combinations, is enthralled. Chel gleefully models every conceivable outfit in that store for him, strutting and twirling. Tulio, who grumbles about the time wasted as she changes, is struck every time she emerges to show off her latest choice. Tulio can offer no criticism beyond dumb gapes and the honest answer they all look amazing on her. Because a man can drown in her curves.

Eventually Chel settles on a russet dress fit for hard travel, because one piece of clothing is cheaper than pants _and_ a shirt, because she adores how the skirt billows when she spins. But mostly because Tulio gapes like a trout when she does and she can make even a unicorn marvel at her impish grace. A stern glare from Tulio at least gets her pinching new leather shoes broken in early. Though the unicorn's firm stare over his shoulder convince the shoes more than Tulio's magic ever could.

Even after he turns it back into a vest, the fabric stubbornly smells of Chel.

He is a partner in crime again, one to play a damsel in distress in some cons or to lure in stupid marks simply as she and the unicorn stand there and watch. She has opposable thumbs and deft, lovely fingers to pickpocket even the wariest people in the street.

In their favorite con, Chel is a traveling noble and Tulio her dutiful manservant. With unwavering airs and pristine manners, they bluff their way in the finest inns and even a manor house once or twice. They rant over those who snidely point out their humble clothes about the horrid conditions on the roads. The elegant 'white stallion' that follows Chel like a loyal hound quiets even the snidest remarks, makes even the oldest and sharpest lady sigh in teary awe.

Despite some unfailing paranoia on Tulio's part, the unicorn never lets Chel astride his back. The adoring little children that wind up pawing at his legs are never given permission to clamber over him either.

In fits and spurts, the story of Manoa leaks out of Chel, as blissful evenings draw down or in lulls of conversation on lonely roads. The gods and folk heroes of the city are those not even Tulio has ever heard before in all his long years of wandering. Even then the city called El Dorado by outsiders had been stalked by the Jaguar God's shadow.

"He is Lord of War and Conquest," Chel says one sunny afternoon, when that black shadow seems only a bad dream. "One day he will unleash his full power upon Manoa and all its enemies. A new era will begin, and the Age of the Jaguar will be written in blood. Tzekel-Kan's been waiting on it for generations."

"But the Obsidian Jaguar already stalks the earth," Tulio points out. "He has for... for quite a while now."

"This world is not his own. Not yet." Chel stares stubbornly ahead. "Tzekel-Kan keeps him here in spilling human blood on his altars. When people try to invade Manoa for our gold or conquest or simply to end his evil, the Jaguar God is there, and he feasts. But not even armies sate his hunger long."

"My people," the unicorn murmurs, green eyes lost. "They ran down these roads long ago, and the Obsidian Jaguar followed close behind them."

"If he did, only Tzekel-Kan remembers," Chel answers firmly. "I know of unicorns from the old outside stories that reached our city before the Jaguar God stalked our borders, from my days after it."

No good ever comes of the stubborn old sorcerers that have willingly outlived living memory. Especially those bound to merciless deities. Tulio's mouth twists. Yet Chel's escape from that shadow proves a flaw in the enchantment.

"How did you escape?"

"I got the hell out of there when my turn on the altar was coming up," Chel says bluntly. "All I had to do was escape a treacherous jungle and Tzekel-Kan's warriors. The Jaguar God leaves our borders every night to hunt. It is not human lives he seeks, or I'd be long dead. There is nothing that can keep the Jaguar God from his prey, once he sets himself to their trail. The armies at our doorstep only ring the dinner bell too rudely for him to ignore."

Unspoken is how many of Chel's own loved ones were bled to quench that insatiable thirst. Even the unicorn knows never to ask.

Eventually and inevitably, Chel and Tulio wind up alone somewhere, the unicorn having cantered away after the bells and banners of some royal procession.

"Hey!" Tulio shouts, long past the point of not calling after the unicorn like a naughty puppy. "Get back here!"

"Oh, you worry too much!" the unicorn whinnies back. He gambols a safe distance away from the crowds pressing the road, running circles around the idiots dumb enough to chase after him.

Chel sighs. "I think he just likes toying with humans now."

"Oh, my gods," Tulio breathes as a troop of silver knights veer away from the retinue to gallop in vain after the unicorn. He only vaults away, springing over the hillside like a shooting star. "He's gone. The unicorn is loose. What are we gonna do?"

Chel huffs a laugh. "Let him burn up his energy so he's not up half the night rambling on about squirrels again?"

Tulio considers the distant sounds of noble men swearing like sounds, and the frightful yelps of hounds fleeing back once they catch the unicorn's scent. His eye twitches. "Yeah," he concedes, falling moodily back into what had been their sheltered campsite. "Now what?"

Chel blinks innocently at him. Too innocently, because her eyes have been roaming up and down his form like they do pretty much every day now.

Tulio blinks back.

"Now?" he squeaks.

She casually examines her nails. "I'm free now. You're free now."

Tulio fumbles for an excuse. "The.... The unicorn..."

They both snort. They come slinking back from towns and barns rumpled or smelling too strongly of soap if someone in their travels catches their eye in return. The unicorn knows each time. The unicorn pretends not to know they know he knows. What does it hurt if their trysts just happen to be with each other for a change?

As soon as Chel's clever fingers work his way into his shoulders, Tulio goes boneless, and loses any train of thought about why this time might be different.

* * *

Unicorns are well-versed in the art of envy. One maiden may be blessed with eternal contentment if such blessed creature deigns rest n their lap for five breathless minutes. The other maiden, hearing only the stories of that girl's luck, may nurse bitterness the rest of their life that a unicorn's fickle whim had not leaned that way for them instead. Some cursed kings they may deign to heal, and some may suffer the rest of their lives without their salvation ever emerging from that same wood.

This unicorn, the last of his kind, has neither favored maidens nor brought back men from the brink of death. Still, the unicorn knows envy. His male birds sing angry songs when the ladies prefer the nests or brighter feathers of a rival. Squirrels fight over the other's acorn caches, eternal spring or not. Deer watch him in breathless awe, for they shall only ever possess the meanest shadow of his grace.

When the unicorn first senses that troublesome storm brewing in his partners, he calmly dispels it. Chel is bold enough to seek his touch. Tulio must be nuzzled and brushed against, to teach him he is no less welcome. The unicorn counts these times, dances to the other when there is a difference to be made up.

Neither ever has the honor of riding him, of sitting breathless as he dozes with his head in their lap. Such blessings are rare. Sacred, even, and best saved for when the Obsidian Jaguar and his missing people found.

Barely out of breath after running knights and hounds and hunters ragged, the unicorn happily canters back to where his partners wait.

His nostrils flare before he even enters the copse.

"Hello!" bursts out Tulio, who scuttles like a crab away from Chel's side. "Er, how did tormenting the king and queen go?"

His partners sit with rumpled clothes and mussed up hair. Each smells strongly of the other. And... other things.

Something peculiar twinges in the unicorn's chest.

Unicorns are objects of envy. They never envy themselves. Why should they? Unicorns alone are blessed with immortal grace and a horn that can heal whole lands and raise even the newly dead. People compete for their favor and kill them for their gifts. There is nothing a unicorn should ever long for. Such pettiness is beyond them.

An older unicorn might take years to stand in place and contemplate this mystery. This unicorn only shoves the oddness aside and resolutely regales them with every hound sent running back or knight sprawled onto his backside.

Unicorns dwell in isolated and eternal spring. They are distant and benevolent guardians of their woodland beasts, but never ask after them, or mourn the passing of a favorite. No animal should ever linger long enough in their hearts to merit such attention.

Change is an immortal's enemy more than a fellow immortal shall ever be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sinbad's got unresolved issues back in Syracuse. Chel's got no time for them. That's the end of that story, and the beginning of two more.
> 
> Funnily enough, Schmendrick the Magician wound up envious in the book because the unicorn bonded stronger to Molly. Considering Miguel is canonically a mediator (up until too many buttons get pushed), and Tulio and Chel first canonically bang within twenty four hours of meeting, the situation resolves itself a bit too well :p


	10. The Obsidian Jaguar

The further they travel, through plain and dry desert, the less the woodlands they encounter can be called anything but jungle. The trees are green and vast, the air so hot and humid Tulio's clothes wind up plastered in sweat. Mosquitoes are a thing, but only if he strays too far from the unicorn. That sweet scent and shining horn repel even agents of disease. Even leeches and piranhas prove shockingly amicable. Monkeys are too bashful to make mischief. Before those cloven hooves, venomous snakes are swift to slither away, and crocodiles drift as docile logs when the unicorn mildly looks to them.

The roads are dirt and winding. The villages they encounter have people that look like Chel. Because Tulio travels with her and a unicorn, the people they encounter only spare im dark looks, and dark mutters that the golden city to the south needs no more saviors.

"Exactly how many armies has the Obsidian Jaguar eaten?" Tulio mumbles as they leave another cynical village.

Chel shrugs. "A lot."

"Why don't they stop?" the unicorn whispers.

"Gold and glory." Chel spits. "Mostly the gold. There is always some king or another convinced he can melt our city down and make us accept his god, if only his men can cush the very embodiment of war. Their hungers only feed his."

"Let's hope we don't meet any, then," Tulio blurts out. "No need to become the appetizer."

From Chel's glare, he realizes he jinxed them. Hours later they spot smoke on the horizon, as one such band of would-be conquerors blazes its way down the Obsidian Jaguar's gullet. Chel's face twists in hatred. Tulio's fists clench. He knows those types of men all too well. They're the sort that love to throw him to the pyre, and then gape in utter bewilderment when their sparks refuse to catch fire.

The unicorn stares after the smoke with the same wonder in which he beheld Celaeno.

"Partner," Tulio warns.

The unicorn's ears flick back his way. "Hm?"

"No."

Finally the unicorn turns. He stares at their solemn expressions and glides to their side without a token protest.

Chel might be the only person alive who knows the direct route to Manoa. She guides them through valleys shaped like soaring eagles. The unicorn trumpets a challenge to what he thinks is a fire-breathing dragon. It's only a cave where golden butterflies roost. The cloud cheerfully swarms around him before flying off. Tulio guffaws for a solid ten minutes, and longer still when the unicorn fumes over it.

They are only two people and a unicorn. This army marches with many more to squeeze through unforgiving jungle. They are slowed by a supply chain or else to pillage what resources they need.

Then comes a day when they wander down into a valley so thick with mist Tulio cannot track the time overhead. The unicorn shines as a beacon through the haze, and brighter still as late afternoon swallows even the gray into deeper shadow. Every day before the jungle has been alive with screeching birds and droning insects. Now all is silent, save for their footfalls and the gurgle of a distant river.

When Chel abruptly stops, so does the unicorn. Tulio bumps into him.

"We camp here tonight."

He squints into the distance. "Are we close?"

"Too close."

Tulio's hand trails to her shoulder as the unicorn nudges at her other. With one hand Chel seizes his and squeezes back. The other rests briefly on the unicorn's muzzle, before winding its way into his mane.

Even the fire Tulio tries to kindle doesn't want to come into existence. He sparks it with much scolding and swearing. Upon kindling, it gutters low and timid even as the mist steadily dissipates. Above leers a full moon and icy stars. Ahead loom mountains blacker than the night sky, jagged like the fangs of a great beast. Tulio can almost feel it breathing.

Warily he settles down on the opposite side of the fire, as if those pitiful flames offer any true protection. Her eyes never leaving those mountains, Chel sinks to his side. Tulio drapes an arm over her shoulder. The unicorn hunkers down behind them, soft warmth pressing against their forms. Their fingers wind into his mane, as if a thief and a hack are strong enough to hold him by his side.

Together they drift into uneasy sleep, huddling close against a stony night.

* * *

Tulio dreams the old nightmare of Celaeno swallowing the unicorn's shining radiance. Then the nightmare shifts. The blackness slowly engulfing the stars isn't Celaeno's churning malevolence, but a colder and deeper darkness, the sleek shape of a predator emerging from the mountain peaks. It looms, larger and larger, until the whole valley seems to blaze green under its malachite gaze.

Chel's nails sink into his flesh, drawing blood. Only then does he know himself awake.

Bugling a challenge, the unicorn springs over their prone forms, horn flashing like lightning. As they scramble back, he charges onward, mad and dancing. At another trumpet the behemoth answers in a rumble like crumbling mountains.

For a heartbeat they all stare in awe at the Obsidian Jaguar, hide sleek stone, and eyes jade bonfires. His claws and fangs are bone-white, pale as the slain skeletons picked clean on his battlefields. His breath reeks of their rotting bodies. His roar is the blare of war drums, the shouts of the berserkers, the screams of the dying. The unicorn, who has danced with nightmares and teased whole hunting parties, dims.

He turns and flees. The Obsidian Jaguar rumbles and leaps after him.

Tulio scrambles after them, though he knows it futile. The unicorn is swift as the wind and his pursuer relentless as night.

The valley echoes with their chase. Trees snap and splinter like twigs. The unicorn's hooves, soft as snowfall, thunder frantically over open stone. He bleats, high and shrill, every time the Jaguar God tramples down another escape route. Tulio and Chel scream after him. Their shouts are lost in the god's rumble.

Tulio stills at another cry from the unicorn, low and forlorn. Now those hooves skitter back his direction. Chel yanks him away before their partner tramples him in his blind terror. Then they are both slammed back by many tons of ruthless stone as the Obsidian Jaguar thunders past.

In one jerky motion, Tulio latches onto Chel. His body cushions her blow as they smash into unrelenting rock. He grits his teeth against a blow that should have flattened his rib cage. He drags himself up with a snarl. Chel's eyes blaze. Together, bruised and bleeding, they limp into the dark. The Jaguar God's claws have wrenched up the valley floor. They struggle over downed tree trunks and through new craters.

Ahead the unicorn has nowhere left to run, for the valley ends with a roaring waterfall. When he tries to scramble up the sides, the Jaguar God is suddenly leering from above until he skitters back down. When he tries to lunge past that bulk, the behemoth nimbly cuts him off. Yet, despite those lethal paws, the Obsidian Jaguar never truly touches the unicorn. He simply presses him toward the waterfall.

"He's driving him," Chel murmurs with iron certainty. "Do something."

Tulio stares at war incarnate, the deity who has made even a unicorn's courage break. The truth escapes in a whisper. "There... There's nothing I can do."

With the Jaguar God leering above, the unicorn sinks back onto his hunches, low and shivering. He does not even try to back away.

"Do. Something."

"What _can_ I do?" he snarls. "Sneeze cards in a god's face? Make him laugh himself to death?" He jolts, nauseated, as he realizes something. "Besides, it's already over."

Slowly, the unicorn rises from his crouch, though his head hangs low in submission, like a broken nag's. Without his light his silver coat is ashy gray and his golden mane like brittle straw. The Jaguar God stands, commanding with only the weight of his presence. Meekly and obediently, the unicorn turns for the waterfall. The black behemoth prowls behind like a sheepdog.

Chel's ruthless nails drive into his arm. "You call yourself Tulio the Trickster. You called up two gods long gone from this world, and a dozen heroes beside, just to drive pirates mad with loss. Now _do something,_ you gutless hack!"

"Why not?" he wonders, dull and listless. "It's not like I can make things any worse."

Her hand slides off him. Tulio staggers forward alone. Dizzy and tired beyond belief, he sags against the strange stone still standing tall and unbroken before the waterfall. He smears blood from Chel's grip all over it, but stands all the same.

"Run!" he cries, while the unicorn still has the room. "Run now!"

His partner never turns to at him. He only gazes at the ground. The Jaguar God rumbles to block out even Tulio's voice, sinking back into the dark. In the east the sky pales with impending dawn.

Tulio strains after his partner, small and wan in the looming shadows. That's his last glimpse of him, before his eyes wrench shut. He sways like a reed in the wind, before something in him wakes and roars up like the tide. He cries aloud, in fear and joy. The words leave him in gales, in exaltation. When it flies forth he crumples to his knees, spent and shivering and yet certain as the coming sunrise that all is not lost.

Ahead, the Obsidian Jaguar stills. He noses something before him. Tulio drags himself forward to see. Chel rushes past him, heedless of the beast. It is something else entirely that stops her in her tracks, makes her claps both hands to her mouth to hold back her horror.

The demon's head swings in Tulio's direction. Those balefire eyes stare into his soul, before they dissipate like fireflies. With one last perplexed rumble for the shape collapsed before him, the Jaguar God sinks into formless shadow.

All that is left is the man, sprawled out into a careless heap. He is nude, pale as moonlight, with sunshine hair spilling down to his back. His face is hidden in arms, but Tulio already knows it to be bearded, that those eyes will soon open emerald.

"Oh," Chel breathes, sick with horror. "Oh, what have you done?"

A sound tears itself out of Tulio's throat, something either a hysterical laugh or a heartbroken wail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why, yes, we have indeed reached that sweet, sweet meat of the story. Because apparently my kink is emotional angst over transformational shenanigans. 
> 
> When the book unicorn got hit with this spell, she took it hard. VERY hard. Like pages and pages of 'I feel this body dying all around me' levels of angst. We're in for some that ahead, but like... a lot less so. Because Miguel is a weirdo for a unicorn and already glommed on a lot stronger to his partners and to some aspects of humanity than Amalthea ever really did. Once he realizes there's a shiny new city to run amok in (and like 6 little kids in that palace even more immature than he is to lure him into ballgames and everything else heart attack-inducing for his partners.)
> 
> There is no Prince Lir analogue chilling in Manoa. There will be a lot of Chel and Tulio wondering 'how we we keep this beautiful idiot alive until he turns back' and 'how do we not bang this beautiful idiot so he can still turn back into our unicorn idiot without things getting super weird.'
> 
> But, yes, first some angst.


	11. The Lord Miguel

Chel falls to her knees. Gently, as if he might shatter at her touch, she takes the young man's head into her lap. Brushing that golden hair back, she beholds the most beautiful face she has ever seen, one fit only for statues and stained glass. Her fingers ghost over his bearded chin. Above and between his closed eyes is a small, raised starburst mark that is no scar or bruise. In sleep he is serene, near smiling. It lightens her heart the same as it wrenches it in two.

"What have you done?" she hisses again.

Tulio gapes. "I - I saved him," he blurts out. "I saved his life. By magic. By _my_ own true magic."

Chel waits for him to say something useful. He only splutters on, trying to convince himself this was a feat, and not his fatal folly.

"Your robe," she commands.

His hands fumble for his vest. As soon as it unfolds Chel snatches it from him, wrapping patchy blackness around that prone and naked form. The young man moans at the heaviness, burrowing his way deeper into Chel's lap and away from the rising sun.

"I... I can change him back," Tulio croaks. "Really."

Chel's sharp sound of scorn makes the man stir. She and Tulio both flinch back. Her trembling hand tries combing through that golden hair, to lull him back into sleep and away from this waking nightmare, but that time has passed now. He moans again, shifting, before his pale eyelids flutter open.

His eyes are still the same, green and fathomless. In them Chel does not see herself, only the trees and pools and beasts of the forest he holds closest to his heart. Chel would know them set into a mouse's humble face, or above a shark's rows of fangs.

Those green eyes gaze into her own, then Tulio's, with a shade of their usual joy for them. Then those blond brows draw down, furrowing in confusion as they realize something is horrifically wrong. His head cranes on a short, stocky neck. Wildness shakes through him, as he wrenches himself from Chel's grasping, fighting against foreign limbs. The robe slips from his shoulders, revealing all beneath.

Even as he gapes down in dumb terror at his own curled hands, he is still beautiful.

"I can change you back," Tulio murmurs miserably. "I promise, I can."

The young man crouches, for his limbs are suddenly both too long and too short. "What have you done to me?" he whispers.

Silent, furious tears spring in Chel's eyes. The magician cannot quite stifle his own sob.

"I-I saved your life. The only way I could. T-There... There wasn't anything I could do. You just gave... I couldn't let him take you. I just couldn't."

"You should have," the young man says hollowly. Tulio chokes.

The young man again strains against his mortal form. Chel catches him. He leans heavily against her as those shaking hands hesitantly reach for his face before shying away. Instead his fingers prod only at his raised mark, trailing to the empty air a horn should fill. He keens.

Chel shifts her body weight, wrapping him in a firm embrace that prevents those hands from flying up to his face again. "Partner," she says firmly, for that name shall always remain true. "Partner, I'm here."

"I will die here," he declares.

"No," she states matter-of-factly. "You won't." Her eyes bore into Tulio.

"We can almost call this a blessing in disguise." When Chel's stare hardens into something murderous, Tulio clears his throat and tries again. "Look, the Obsidian Jaguar didn't take you like this. With this face, you can walk right into Manoa and finally find out what happened to your people. You just couldn't do that in your true shape."

Chel blinks at this astute point. But the young man is in no mood for any positive side.

"I can feel this body dying all around me. How do you _bear_ it?"

Chel drapes the robe over that shivering form again, if only so he might not face it so openly. "Because we've never known anything else. And because we have to."

"...I don't."

She stares. Even the man tilts his head in that familiar gesture of confusion. Tulio breathes raggedly, running nervous hands through his hair, and stares off into the distance.

"What?" she asks flatly.

"As a kid I wound up apprenticed to Hermes Trismegistus, greatest magician of all time. Legend says he lived centuries, that he invented alchemy and how to bind spirits to your will." Tulio shorts. "Utter horseshit, by the way. The name Trismegistus passed father to son, master to apprentice, for generations. They build off the names and achievements of those who came before. My master was the last of that name. He could domesticate dragons and turn unicorns into men. And he couldn't make his crappy apprentice into anyone but me."

"Until you somehow made yourself immortal?" Chel guesses dryly.

He grimaces. "Hermes did that, actually. On purpose. Apparently I held a power greater than even he had ever known. And tore his beard out in frustration when he couldn't get me to know it. So, when he felt himself in his last days, he stopped mine completely. I'm stuck in time until I figure myself out. Or something." Tulio rubs at his temples. "'Don't thank me. I tremble at your doom.' That part I remember precisely. Because those were his last words to me."

The young man regards him in quiet uncertainty. It's Chel who blurts out, "What happens when you do?"

Tulio smiles wanly. "Time finds me again. I can be a mortal magician in control of himself, instead of the immortal failure." Deep blue eyes find fathomless green. "Once I told you the greatest magician in the world could turn a unicorn into a man, but never change him back. It is now literally my destiny to free you."

"So free me," the man whispers, face even more devastating in his hope.

"But not right now," Tulio finishes. That face crumbles, even when the magician stoops to kneel at his side. "You know my magic doesn't work that, not yet. It comes and goes. I can't exactly turn you back until you've find your own fate."

"And we can't learn anything down here in the dirt," Chel chimes in, gingerly lacing her fingers through those brand new. Emerald eyes bulge at the contact. "Now we can either sit here, or we can stand up and find out what happened to all the other unicorns."

For an eternity the young man blinks up at her. Then he lurches on brand new limbs. Chel grunts and helps hoist him up on two precarious legs. Tulio flies to their side, so that they might support their partner more firmly between them. He stands no taller than he did as a unicorn, though his presence somehow scarcely smaller without that blazing horn.

"Um," Tulio intervenes. "Exactly how do we enter Manoa without being butchered alive?"

Chel considers the men before her. One is an immortal idiot and the other very much the inhuman made human. Even Tzekel-Kan will be made breathless by their partner's presence. She bites her lip and glances back to the stele of the Dual Gods, who stand smiling and benevolent even under the Obsidian Jaguar's shadow. If they had a horse to pass as the Feathered Serpent, then...

But the time for that particular con has long passed. Manoa will never accept gods in mortal flesh while Balam Qoxtok prowls the nights and their nightmares.

"Tzekel-Kan does not rule in Manoa," she murmurs at long last. "Not truly." Not until the day his god _finally_ heeds him, instead of hunting and rampaging as he wishes. "And his authority doesn't extend over guests of the city. Those are received by the chief."

"Ah," Tulio says, eyes glinting in thought. "I see."

"I don't," sighs their partner, too weary to even pretend.

"It's high time we expanded your repertoire," Tulio tells him, as he once taught this young man how to read cards and let unsuspecting marks fawn over him while his partners robbed them blind. "All you really have to do is stand there and look aloof as you usually do."

Chel bites back an incongruous smile when the man's hilt slowly tilts in absolute bewilderment.

* * *

Between the two steady pillars of his partners, a man born just this morning stumbles down a valley into the utter blackness beyond the waterfall. He shivers as the cold spray douses his naked skin, his bare feet squelch against icy stone. Reflexively one limp hand raises to clutch at the robe's neckline. He has gone human lifetimes without wearing a stitch of clothing.

Tulio calls a torch into being with his free hand. He groans at the black snake of a river and the narrow, treacherous path beside it. "Are we walking?"

"I walked," Chel answers. "We're taking the boat."

A faint ghost of interest stirs in the new-made man. He remembers staring with envy over that bustling port town he was not allowed in, the billowing white sails that sailed into the harbor, just as he remembers Sinbad's pirate ship and Tulio's fantastical fleet summoned from mythic memory. This will be his very first time on the water.

His lips twist as he beholds their ride, a small and sad box of timber tied up not far into the tunnel. _"That's_ it?"

"It sure as hell beats walking."

The man lets his partners guide him into that sad excuse of a boat. He clings desperately to the side, heart hammering as it rolls beneath them. When Chel settles down at his side, holding the torch, the man seizes her hand in an iron grip. Her fingers squeeze around his own. Somehow this still his heart. Tulio stands behind them. His grumbled swears at working the oar soothe the man even more.

With wide eyes the man is guided through a very new sort of con. He blinks at them. Given how today's been so far for him, his partners accept that shocked silence as acknowledgement enough. As time crawls past, their planning settles down into fretting, then idle chatter, and finally anxious quiet. The man listens to it all without raising a single word.

When stalagmites and boulders carved in the shape of colossal heads loom out of the darkness, the man marvels at them, but such sights soon grow boring. Instead he wriggles his ten toes against the smooth wooden floor. The hand gripping the side cautiously creeps up. He runs the fabric of Tulio's robe through his fingers. Eventually he works up the courage to rove over his own alien face, that small nose and rounded ears and unsettling smoothness.

Always, there is the fiery undercurrent of his new terminal condition. A mortal body is a burning house, driving him closer to death with every heartbeat. At least his new fingers are overly sensitive to everything around them, and distract him from that looming finality.

He still has his beard. Tulio's magic has robbed him of his healing horn, of his very immortality, but not the facial hair he's prized since adolescence turned that his fuzzy chin thick and golden as his mane.

His nose, dull as it now is, twitches as a new smell gradually mixes into the dankness of the cave.

"Seawater?" Tulio wonders aloud.

"We're built on a bay," Chel explains lightly. "Not that ships dare the ocean route. The spirits under those waves are... fickle."

From darkness they are delivered into golden afternoon. The man skews his eyes shut against the sudden brightness as their boat passes through the mossy curtain, but wonder soon has them wide open.

"El Dorado," Tulio breathes in awe.

The young man gawks at golden pyramids that soar into the sky like artificial mountains. He drinks in the rainbow fish that swim beneath them and the golden clouds of butterflies fluttering above. A strange joy tugs his lips upward.

That lightness sinks like a stone when he notices the people, gaping from every side like the audience from Dama Fortuna's Enchanted Carnival. His face settles into its usual solemnity. Now it is the people who shift their feet sheepishly, who avert their eyes and throw themselves back into their business.

Tulio guides their boat to a dock. Broad-shouldered men wielding spears force their way through the crowd. When the young man's partners help him rise to disembark, the warriors lower their weapons, and bow their heads in a semblance of respect.

"Give your names," blurts out the broadest of the men, with a jaguar pelt draped over his shoulders. "Er, please."

Tulio takes a step forward, sweeping a grandiose arm to those behind him. "I am Tulio the Magician. She is Chel, a native to your fair city. And this is- the Lord Miguel, called... Lord Miguel." He stumbles over the sound, one the young man has never heard him speak before. "We serve him with our lives."

"Lord Miguel seeks an audience with Chief Tannabok," Chel stresses. "We have traveled a very long way."

The young man listens to this all with great confusion.

Then he realizes he is apparently Lord Miguel, called Lord Miguel.

The warriors awkwardly shift. One slips away, hastening through the crowd for a temple tall and dark. Their leader awkwardly clears his throat.

"I'm called Chima," he offers. "What is your business with Chief Tannabok?"

"We will," Chel states primly, "to Chief Tannabok. Who are we, lowly servants, to interfere in the matters of nobility?"

Chima's shoulders droop in surrender. He ushers them onward.

The new-made man stays where he is. His gaze instead drifts out to the water, where white waves are rolling in. They shimmer gold in the late afternoon glow.

"Lord Miguel," Tulio hisses, lingering at his side.

Miguel blinks, startles from his pondering, and follows his partner.

* * *

Chief Tannabok's palace has walls of cool blue stone, made warm by the fires blazing merrily in their braziers, and ornate decorations that evoke the Sun God and the benevolent Dual Gods. Skulls and darkness are motifs reserved for Balam Qoxtok's temple, looming from the windows. Chel catches Tulio eying some of the more ostentatious statues. One pointed look from her, and one guilty glance to the newly-named Lord Miguel, has him shuffling onward.

Chief Tannabok is not a tall man, but he is a broad man, and he fills his throne from his weighty presence alone. Some of Chel's panic unwinds at the mere sight of him. Her chief is a good man, a just man, though not even he can shield his people from the speaker of the gods. He sits calmly and benevolently, though wariness swims in his eyes. Manoa has not received foreign dignitaries since long before his time, when the Jaguar God stalked only dreams alone.

"I am Chief Tannabok," he offers. "My Lord Miguel, why now do you choose to visit Manoa?"

"Your city is a legend made fact," Tulio declares grandly. "We have heard tales of its wonders from a dozen kingdoms away. There is nothing more wondrous than to gaze upon your golden temples, your fantastical creatures, to behold the sacred city where the gods themselves deign walk among you."

"Lord Miguel is on pilgrimage," Chel offers more truthfully, when Chief Tannabok's smile strains at a truth stretched a tad too thin. "He seeks enlightenment on the innermost troubles of his heart. We have traveled far and wide, to no avail. Manoa, my own homeland, is his last chance to find the answers he seeks."

Miguel offers nothing to the lie. He drifts to the window, to gaze upon the sea.

Chief Tannabok watches for him a long moment. His gaze softens in understanding. "I see," he murmurs at last. "My lord, how long will you be staying in Manoa?"

"Enough," a voice hisses from the far shadows.

Cold sweat runs down Chel's neck. Tulio clamps down a squawk at the man that stalks from the dark, where there had been no man a moment ago. Miguel does not turn.

"Tzekel-Kan," the chief offers without warmth.

"My chief," purrs the priest, stalking forward. "I came as soon as I caught word of outsiders in our city."

"They are my guests."

The high priest immediately fixates on her. In Miguel's presence, she does not shrink back, though this stony and unchanging face has spilled her brother's blood before demanding her own. "I see you finally caught a temple-robbing thief," he insists. His gaze disdainfully flicks to Tulio. "And what are _you_ supposed to be?"

Tulio splutters, puffing out his chest. "I am Tulio the Magician, last of-"

Dark eyes pierce right through his bravado. "I know what you are, and what you are not," Tzekel-Kan hisses, "And you are no magician. I am a sorcerer gifted with years and wisdom beyond count. A failure like you isn't even worth offering up as sacrifice."

"W-Well that's just rude!"

Tzekel-Kan ignores his outburst. The light drains from the room as he rounds on Chief Tannabok, raising his arms to call up his sorcery. "My chief, your mercy is boundless to the point of foolishness. You invite in snakes to slither into the beds of your children, spineless and slippery."

Tulio's breath hitches in envy at the crackling green serpents taking shape in Tzekel-Kan's effortless waves. Chel shrinks closer to Tulio. Chief Tannabok sits rigid in his throne. The serpents hiss, rearing up to strike. She's too panicked to know who they're aiming for.

In the sickly green light, she glimpses Miguel turn. He stretches out a commanding hand. The mark upon his head shines bright as dawn.

The serpents evaporate. The darkness shrinks back. The fires crackle faithfully in their braziers. Tzekel-Kan stumbles back from the true power in the room. Even as he trembles head to toe, he gapes, wide and wondrous.

"Oh," he murmurs. _"Oh."_

Chel and Tulio gawk when Tzekel-Kan, high priest and speaker of the gods, sinks into a bow. It is not his chief he faces.

"As you command, my chief," he purrs. "These are your... _guests."_

Steadily, he backs into the shadows, before the dark swallows him. His eyes are the last to linger, blazing ravenously after Miguel's radiance.

"...Why don't I show you and your companions to your rooms, my lord?" Chief Tannabok asks, only a tad uneven.

"Rooms are good," Tulio blurts out.

Miguel turns back to the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it only took eleven chapters for Miguel to actually get his name :D
> 
> Before the Obsidian Jaguar, I toyed with our idiots bumping into Cortes' expedition and liberating Altivo, but I couldn't get the idea to work right in my head. Especially because no one wanted to run into a whacko like that. Which means my idea to once again play the god con also took a back seat. That one was for the better. The last thing this Miguel's mental state needs is another pedestal to be placed on. ...I'm gonna find a place to squeeze Altivo in if I can. Really.
> 
> Yes, Tulio's circumstances behind his spell are the same as Book!Schmendrick's. The idea was too intriguing not to use. And this marks the second time I shifted Manoa from a land-locked lake to a bay on the ocean for a story. Because plot.


	12. The Choices Ahead

After a day of sailing through darkness and guiding the newly-dubbed Miguel through the worst of his shock, all Tulio wants is to collapse face-first into the nearest pillow. Instead, just when he is being led to such salvation, the palace beneath them lurches. His blood chills at a familiar rumble. Miguel freezes, eyes wide and chest fluttering. Had he still had them, his ears and tails would be pricked to their tallest.

"Do not be frightened," the guide to their rooms assures. "It is only the Jaguar God."

Miguel makes a low, anxious sound in his throat. When he is on the verge of bolting Chel strays close enough for her to once more hold his hand. He clenches in a death grip. "He prowls beyond our borders every night," she murmurs. "He won't even sniff your way."

At last they are led to three rooms, one right next to the other. Miguel is naturally given the largest. He paces its confines as he once had Dama Fortuna's iron cage. Without even gazing upon the furniture he drifts out to the balcony, gazing out to sea. It is perhaps the only thing in Manoa older and vaster than himself.

"Thank you," Tulio tells the servant. "We'll, er, attend to Lord Miguel."

The woman dips her head. She lingers on the way out, bashfully gazing upon Miguel's inhuman beauty for as long as she can until Chel's pointed stare sends her scurrying. Honestly, Tulio can't blame her for drinking up the sight. In the moonlight Miguel's pristine complexion practically glows like the unicorn's hide. Of course it does.

Once they're alone, he and Chel turn to their partner. He does not even turn their way.

"...Partner?" Tulio creaks out. That much is still true, right?

A short eternity follows.

"Why 'Lord Miguel?'"

Tulio blinks. "We needed a noble title to sell the con and, frankly put, you're nothing less than a lord. 'Prince' might be even more fitting, but we really can't bullshit an entire kingdom and a royal dynasty to go along with it." He pauses. "Also, this world more than owes you some respect. If they don't know their true name they should at least manage something appropriate for your human guise."

The man does still does not face them, though his head ever so slightly cants in his old intrigue. "Yes, I know _that._ Why the name, not the title?"

Tulio rubs his neck. "It was the first thing that popped into my head," he admits sheepishly. "For the archangel, the divine slayer of dragons. Also... because of the name itself. 'Who Is Like God' sums you up in a nutshell."

At least the man turns to reveal his absolute bewilderment. "I don't understand."

Chel bites back a bittersweet smile. "No, but I do. It's a human thing." Her gaze flicks to the bed, big and blue and surely soft beyond belief. "You've had a long, long day. It's time we all got some rest."

This is the man's first time properly indoors. They coax him into bed, for he pauses every time to poke at the pillows and bounce at its springiness. Then Miguel tries curling up as he did as a unicorn, arms and legs tucked beneath him so that he can spring up in a heartbeat. Eventually they coax him into spreading out his limbs to lay flat on his stomach. Miguel never points out how comfier this position is before conking out.

Above his head, Tulio and Chel share a brief smile that withers in a shared revelation.

Despite the own mattress calling his name, Tulio grabs his pillows and camps out beside Miguel's mattress. Chel settles down beside him.

Not even an hour later, they spring to their feet at Miguel's first bleating cries, so like the unicorn's. Tulio pins down his thrashing form, grunting at the closed fists that pummel him like hooves. Emerald eyes fly open.

"The Jaguar," he keens. "He's here, he's-"

With firm but gentle holds to keep his frail form from slamming into the stone floor, or tearing into himself, they bring him back to himself. They whisper, stroke his golden hair, and grasp his hands to remind him of his temporary mortality and Balam Qoxtok's inability to take him.

They are able to lull him back to sleep after the first nightmare.

And the second.

The third he wakes screaming of the Obsidian Jaguar, Miguel forces himself to his feet, and does not sleep again.

It is not yet dawn.

* * *

Manoa is Chel's home and her prison. Her status as Chief Tannabok's guest only extends so far. She limits herself to the palace and only dares venture out in broad daylight, where any royal guard might spot Tzekel-Kan's acolytes accosting a protected servant. When she leaves, it is only to scour various temple archives for the fate of the unicorns, and even the origins of what called the Jaguar World into this world to begin with.

Her searches turn up nothing. The texts might have been confiscated decades ago, when her own grandmother was young. If there is any evidence left, it lays in the halls of Balam Qoxtok's temple, under the eyes of his zealous priest. Chel is indeed a thief. That stolen idol supported her first days as a refugee before she happened across Sinbad and the ship. But she has never been a _stupid_ thief. Grabbing one head from the Dual Gods' deserted temple is one thing. Granting Tzekel-Kan the excuse to execute her is quite another.

The rest of Chel's time is spent watching Miguel. He's been... delicate since the Obsidian Jaguar. Since the spell that trapped him in mortal bones.

Miguel dares not leave the palace. Instead he wanders the halls like a ghost, just as elusive. The staff know him only as the pale wisp that flees around corners or holds up in his room during the day, staring out to sea. He never speaks to them, never looks them in the eye. Chief Tannabok's family sees even less of him. The uproarious laughter and pounding feet of their boys sends him skittering long before their paths ever cross. Chief Tannabok and Chieftess Miya are polite on the very rare times they happen upon their guest, but do not linger long. They are unnerved by him as much as he is of him.

But Chel's partner does not flee from her, even now. He'll listen quietly as she fills the silence with her own inane ramblings of the day, just to keep him grounded to his current reality. Occasionally he'll muster up a question or comment, when a shadow of his old curiosity shows itself. Chel makes sure he eats the meals left at his door. At least his appetite is never lacking. He downs them eagerly, once reminded of his hunger. Apparently human taste buds have a more complex palate than unicorns, who graze on only grass and the fruits of their groves.

Neither of them see much of Tulio. The magician has buried himself in books of myth and magic, searching both for the Obsidian Jaguar's weakness and the counter-spell to his own idiocy. Chel catches his lanterns burning at all hours. He drops by only to report on his frustrating lack of progress, to shower a solemn Miguel in apologies and increasingly uncertain reassurances that his prison will not last much longer.

When the pressure becomes too much, Tulio makes a grand appearance at dinnertime. The princes are enthralled by his magic tricks. He basks in their cheers and earnest applause, if only to distract from his failure as anything but a cheap entertainer. Miguel never dines outside his room.

Chel's worried vigil can only last so long. Eventually she always crashes into a few hours of sleep. Whether she's awake or asleep, Miguel is a restless shade, pacing the halls when he is too restless to brood from his balcony. She has not seen him attempt sleep since that first night. He must succumb from time to time. No matter his immortal spirit his current form is far more fragile.

Those habits inevitably start taking their toll. Miguel's ethereal beauty starts drifting to tragic. Shut up inside and his restless paths illuminated only by moonlight, his shining features are tinged sallow. Dark bruises wear their way under his eyes. His elegant beard soon turns scraggly, for his gaze flashes like lightning whenever Chel gently suggests cutting it. That long mane of hair is prone to tangling, no matter Chel's gentle brushing or patient fingers.

"He's drifting away," Chel bluntly informs the source of this one night, when she can longer take it.

Tulio blinks, but knows better than to deny it. "It... It hasn't been that long," he points out desperately. "Not even by human standards!"

"We're so focused on our partner and the damned Jaguar God that the time is flying by. For us." Chel bites her lip. "All our partner does it stare out to sea or wander halls he must know by heart. And think about how his human body is dying by moments."

Tulio drags anxious hands through his jet-black hair. "H-He's _human._ At least for now. Even as a unicorn his natural curiosity was bursting at the seams. He should be out in town, ogling over everything he possibly can. This disguise lets him blend right in, lets people realize they can understand him. Why is he letting it all go to waste?"

"I tell him all about Manoa every day. We use giant turtles for ferries and storks the size of giraffes, for gods' sake. But I can't _make_ him see any of it anymore than I can force him to enjoy it." Chel sighs. "One thing I learned about unicorns is that no good can ever come of forcing them."

The magician grimaces in agreement. "So what do we do?"

"Keep trying, every damn day. And never give up. He'll survive this, even if he never enjoys it. One day he'll be himself again, even if we have to find a way to kill a god." Chel shivers. "We have no other choice."

Tulio bows his head.

They can always give up, let Miguel wither in his prison and leave the fate of his people forever undiscovered.

But, though she'll answer to it one day or another, Chel will never, ever choose death as an option. Not for the things worth fighting for.

* * *

As a unicorn, Miguel could recount every last minute detail of his forest, to the eye color of each beast to how the sunlight dapples his trees at each moment of the day. Mortal memory is not flawless. The harder he tries to hold onto the fragrances of his wood, how each star shines in the reflection of his pool, the faster they seem to slip away. Gazing out to sea cannot help him then. That empty expanse is nothing like the clustered trees of his home. There is only tangy salt on the wind.

The palace gardens are little like home. The plants are as strange through the insects crawling through them and the vibrant birds perched in the tropical trees. But a little familiarity is better than none at all. The smell of loamy earth is a universal constant. So is the softness of green grass beneath him, and the sturdiness of the trunk he leans against. Such sensations are as familiar as they can be when trapped in this stupid naked skin and the clothes modesty forces him to wear at all times.

Miguel dares the garden only at night. There is solitude that way, close as he can come. The guards know to hurry past his favorite haunts. Those who once used the shadows as their favorite escape have found other quiet corners. A unicorn's contentment keeps their groves in eternal springtime. Miguel's sorrow hangs heavy over those trees when he broods, and withers whatever arousal they once felt.

But today Miguel simply cannot wait for sunset. Homesickness eats away at his body, his mind, drives him from his balcony. He hurries through halls where far too many people gasp and pretend not to have seen them. Their whispers buzz at his ears, for they are no longer keen enough to hear them properly. He does not breathe easily until there is green grass beneath his feet, and a dappled canopy overhead.

He's... He's forgotten how vibrant leaves look under golden sunlight, and not the cold light of the moon. He falls beside his oldest and favorite tree there, nails digging into the bark as he attempts to cling not to that specific tree, but the grove he abandoned long ago.

Miguel is not alone. Green eyes warily find Chief Tannabok's four oldest boys, clustered at the opposite side of the garden. They stare right back.

After a long moment, the boys avert their eyes from him, and back to the red rubber ball they bounce between them. Miguel relaxes. Every beast of his wood had marveled at his arrival, but knew it was not to place to gawk at him. Of course a man wise as Chief Tannabok taught his children proper manners around a unicorn.

Miguel does not know both Chief Tannabok and Chieftess Miya have drilled their boys on being polite to this strange lordly guest from a faraway land, to mind their manners by not staring or goading him. Since they cannot do these things, they get back to their ballgame, and soon forget the stranger as the score ticks closer.

Their laughter soothes Miguel, though he thinks of evenings dozing in stables and watching musicians then he does of his wood. It is still familiar enough a sound that, warmed by the sun overhead, his eyes steadily drift close.

He dreams he is himself again, lounging in his wood, albeit one within earshot of a thriving town square. His partners are there, performing the dice con, as some boys play ball around them. That combination is not peculiar, merely a harmonious blend of both lives.

"Look out!"

Miguel grunts, eyes flying open as a ball rudely bounces off his chest. He rubs at the red mark left behind. One boy fumbles to get the ball in control. The other three gape in horror.

"Excuse you!" Miguel huffs.

"It was Yei!" one boy shouts, jabbing a finger at his brother.

"Nuh-uh!" protests the accused, poking the other boy right back. "It was Ome!"

The smallest boy, hands behind his back, scuffs a guilty foot. "Actually, it was my fault. I'm very, very so-"

The tallest boy claps a hand over his mouth, bowing as best he can while stifling his baby brother. "As the oldest, my brothers are my responsibility. It's all my fault. My deepest apologies, my lord."

His brows furrow. "That doesn't make any sense. How can it be your fault if _he_ did it?"

"I know," insists the smallest boy, wriggling his way free. "That's why it's _my-_ umph!"

Once again his brother muffles him. "No, Naui, it's _my fault._ It's what big brothers do."

"Oh." Miguel blinks and settles back against his tree. "All right, then." He's drowsy enough to try drifting off again. The four little boys still staring warily after him interfere with that. "I don't have brothers, so don't expect me to understand what that was all about. Now shoo."

The princes hasten off back to their side of the garden. After some quiet bickering and a failed attempt to agree on another game, they get right back to playing ball. Thinking they learned their lesson about aiming his way, Miguel clasps his hands over his chest, and finds new peace in them.

Not five minutes later, the ball flies his way. This time he's awake enough to catch with both hands before it smacks his chest. "Oh, come on!"

"Sorry, my lord!" shouts the oldest.

Naui frowns. "Is the ball out because he caught it?"

"Nah," Yei decides. "'Cause he's not really playing."

"It's out because it's _out,"_ rules Ome.

Miguel frowns down at the ball, turning it over in his hands. He's witnessed more than enough ballgames to know they involve hands. "Aren't you _supposed_ to catch the ball?"

"Not in this game," says Naui.

"You're supposed to keep it from touching the ground," chimes in Yei.

"Without using your hands at all!" butts in Ome.

Miguel blinks at them. "Really?"

"Yes, my lord," answers the oldest. "It's not really the game played by the gods, but it's closer than how we used to play."

"Do you wanna play?" bursts out Naui. "It's my first time, too!"

"We're not supposed to bother him, Naui!"

"You've already bothered me," Miguel points out mildly.

Ome droops. "Oh. Do you wanna play, then?"

He considers the ball. "Why not?"

The oldest gapes, but the younger three accept this without preamble. However, their big brother insists on 'proper introductions,' because they've yet to have actually happened in the weeks before. He introduces himself as Matla. His brothers are Ome, Yei, and Naui. They have two brothers even younger, Kuili and Chiku, but they're just babies too small to play games yet. Miguel responds he is called Miguel, because that is also the truth.

* * *

An hour later, when Miya is ready to call her boys inside for lunch, their names wheeze out as nothing. Because her sons have found a playmate.

Lord Miguel moves with liquid grace. He reels circles around her boys, deftly bringing the ball back under the control when it careens off, or giving it the gentlest of nudges so Naui has a chance of hitting back. His smile, wide and gormless, does not seem to fit his solemn beauty until Miya realizes no other grin will do. For once, his green eyes sparkle, and are not a thousand lifetimes away.

Their lunch goes cold as Miya watches their game. She can no more interrupt it than she stop the sunrise.

Inevitably Naui notices her presence. Lord Miguel freezes like a startled deer, the ball bouncing off the back of his head. His eyes are wide and uncertain, even as her oblivious boys pull him onward to lunch. In their innocent minds, the faster they eat, the faster they get back to their game.

Before Miya can tell them off their bad manners, another voice answers.

"All right, all right," sighs Lord Miguel in fond, exasperated surrender.

It's the first time Miya has ever heard him speak. She quickly has another place at the table set up for him, because this is the first time Lord Miguel has dined in public. Tannabok's eyes bulge for only a moment. Then he continues heroically coaxing Kuili to eat his mashed maize. Lord Miguel stares warily after him, sits down like he'll need to bolt at a moment's notice. His eyes flick to the food. He downs it with gusto.

Chel, searching for her wayward lord, freezes on the threshold. From the way she is quick to pick her jaw off the floor, even she has not expected this of him.

"Care to join us, Chel?" Miya calls lightly. "We've just settled down."

Chel does so. She sits as close as she can to her lord with so many idolizing boys clustered around him. After lunch, she too is conscripted into the ballgame. With two adults Miya's boys have even numbers for teams once more.

That night, Tulio drags himself down for dinner. Fortunately, Lord Miguel is engrossed in her boys' excited chatter, and does not hear his magician splutter like a dying weasel at the unexpected guest. Chel smiles brightly, puts a finger to his lips, and drags him down to sit beside her. Lord Miguel grins their way.

"Say," he muses. "I don't believe I ever told you two about how I used to play hide-and-seek growing up."

" _You_ played hide-and-seek?" Tulio blurts out. "With _who?"_

"The animals of my mother's wood, of course," Lord Miguel states simply. "My mother had too much self-respect to lower herself to it." He blinks in sudden, sheepish clarity. "Also, I think she _really_ wanted some of her old peace back, if only for a moment. An easy child I was not."

Her boys clamber on about what sorts of animals play the best hide-and-seek. Lord Miguel tells them the champions were always tortoises, who had the patience to outlast all other competitors, and the tendency to play with their minds. One rabbit spent the rest of his life watching a rock every single moment he could, waiting when that tortoise would finally cave and admit they were caught.

Chel and Tulio laugh a bit too loudly, wink to often to Miya and Tannabok that of course all these are stories.

Everyone at that table knows Lord Miguel is not one for falsehood.


	13. The F Word

"'Come with us,' she said. 'It'll be a break from it all,' she said." Tulio mumbles while he can, because he is too busy gasping for breath otherwise.

Chief Tannabok's sons have brought Miguel out of his shell. They also reignited his boundless sense of wonder. Chief Tannabok, who is so tired of his lordly guest climbing the walls and ogling over every last minute detail of his palace, had suggested Chel tour him on the sights of the city. Miguel hadn't need to be told twice.

Chasing a unicorn through town streets was bad enough. Upon Manoa's wondrous sights they have unleashed a whirlwind. Miguel gapes at the crystal clear canals and vibrant architecture. He bounces back and forth like a rubber ball, chattering every with every last stall vendor as he questions them about their wares. Once he simmered where most had only seen a mute white stallion. Now he rambles to anyone unfortunate enough to catch his eye.

Chel is ostensibly the one to keep Miguel on a leash, but she is slack with it. As their partner blathers on over the wonders of tamales, she only listens with a wide, idiot grin. One that is incredibly infectious. Tulio tries and fails to look stern, to shoo Miguel on from the happily harried vendors. Instead he's a beaming accomplice to it.

Tulio is long-lived and far-traveled. Even he can state Manoa is a city like no other. The gold dripping from most people and even the buildings is only part of it. Never before has he hitched a ferry ride upon a giant turtle or gaped down at rainbow kingfish larger than most fishing boats. Or tripped over a little armadillo scurrying after a butterfly. Miguel gapes like a child as cranes tall as giraffes feed from his basket. He laughs even as he winces, for those massive beaks comb through his snarled hair.

Chel and Tulio have come to live for that sound. At first it had been rare, light and tinkling like the sound of wind chimes. Now their partner laughs far more frequently, deep and confident with a sound perhaps too uncouth for his true form. But this is a disguise, an excuse to enjoy himself in the face of the crushing reality.

Miguel throws himself into street games. The dancers of the pole jostle to offer him their place. Tulio, connected to gravity by a single rope, marvels at a sensation as close as man might ever come to flying. The ground spins. The wind streams Chel and Miguel's hair out into banners.

Once on the ground, Tulio is content to stay there and wait for his surroundings to stomach spinning. Chel leans against his side to regain her balance. They wave wryly at Miguel as he goes again. And again. After three times in a row, Miguel is finally cut off. He staggers back into their arms. He tries and fails to express his plea for one more turn. Then he vomits all over Tulio's vest. Ugh.

Miguel's face flickers when they hear about the wonders of the bone-sticks. Of course he has every reason to despise everything transformational. Rumors that there is no magic involved still draw them in. The bone-sticks are simple rectangles arranged in patterns. Letting them fall turns one picture into another. When someone graciously invites them to try, Miguel winds up commandeering the whole square. Everyone is enthralled by his smiles, is as excited as he is to bring his vision to life.

Once it's finished, Tulio watches in breathless awe as a deep blue moon is swallowed by golden sunrise. Miguel grins proudly back at him. Tulio's stomach somersaults. He does not have time to ponder this mystery before he is tugged on to the next adventure.

Manoa's traditional music is played on drums and pipes. Under the Jaguar God's jealous shadow, there is little room for peaceful exchange of ideas. They scour the stalls to find a treasure far more priceless than gold. Miguel cradles that old, beat-up guitar like his firstborn.

Tulio's lips quirk. "Seems like there is a positive side to all this, huh? Like opposable thumbs?"

Chel elbows him in the ribs. They both still when Miguel looks up from his admiration to smile wryly at them.

"I suppose there is."

"...Huh," Chel mumbles, more thoughtful than relieved. She and Tulio both recall those early days, when Miguel withered away in his misery.

Miguel plops down on a quiet corner. His fingers strum tentatively, before reaching for the tuners. Of course he knows what a good guitar sounds like. He's griped about the bad ones often enough on their journeys. His pickiness was partially a unicorn's keen hearing and partially a unicorn's impossible standards.

Expert ear satisfied, Miguel leans back and begins to play. Tulio recognizes the melody as a quiet and simple love song. For one who has known endless years with cloven hooves, his partner's fingers dance upon the strings as if a born musician.

Chel squeezes Tulio's arm in a silent question. Their partner, oblivious to their bewilderment, plays on.

"It's the magic," he murmurs back. "Sometimes things just get carried over."

Hermes Trismegistus had transformed that imperiled unicorn into a young man gifted with the same lethal grace. He had used the spiraled blade crafted from the magic as masterfully as he had wielded his own horn. If Tulio were to invite Miguel to fence, his swordsmanship would be much the same. Miguel, who had developed such an ear for music, would express it in this form. He'd do just the same if the magic had made him into a songbird instead of a man.

Despite himself, Tulio squints.

Upon the arrival, Miguel had begun to waste away, sallow and frail from his mournful repose. He is still enthralled by the sea, but his partners and his playmates are always quick to snap him from the spell. Exercise and long hours in the sun with Chief Tannabok's boys have brought new vigor to his limbs, a new glow to his skin. A... A tan even. The circles under his eyes are fainter by the day. Miguel's nightmares are less vivid now. Drained by the unfailing energy of young children, he sleeps through the night, stirred only by the nightly rumblings of Balam Qoxtok.

Miguel irritably brushes his long aside before falling back into his melody. Tulio's eyes rivet to the exposed slope of his neck, the shoulder slipping out from a neckline too large.

Upon the transformation, Tulio had ached to gaze upon his partner, yet could not tear his eyes away. He had beheld a masterpiece, beautiful as the unicorn had been beautiful, the pure and lofty ideal sculptors and painters longed in vain to capture.

The unicorn's grace is still there, though now under a tan than moon-silver skin, somewhat jostled by the foot that starts to tap to the music, the uneven smile pulling at Miguel's mouth. Tulio stares at those nimble fingers and imagines... _possibilities._

Oh.

Oh no.

Tulio slaps himself.

Chel gapes at him. Miguel jerks up from his song.

"Nothing," Tulio says casually, cheek still stinging. "Just a fly."

Just his own ego, in love with his magic, and not the actual subject of the spell.

Just his own age, long worn past normal boundaries by the sheer weight of the years. Of course he's nuts enough to see even a transformed unicorn like that. Unicorns are infamous for inspiring either the very best in those who gaze upon them or the very worst.

His libido, not so caught up in self-denial, insists this is a very fine man.

A _very_ fine man.

Tulio casts his eyes away. Another brown armadillo hunches in the shadows, ears pricked at the music.

* * *

"Um, Chel?"

Chel glances up from a text she has read ten times, rubbing at her aching temples. She chokes.

"Please, Chel," Miguel sheepishly tries again, hair a literal bird's nest. "A little help here."

Miguel's hair, once a golden wave, is now an unholy mass of twigs, downy feathers, and far less pleasant bird byproducts. Apparently because a rescue has gone horribly awry.

"Naui - ouch - noticed the - gah - nest first." Chel gives up on the comb and switches to her fingers, teasing out what snarls she can. Miguel sniffs. "I was getting them - ow - into a safer place. And that the mother - ah - had the gall to attack _me."_

"I can't imagine why," Chel says neutrally as she can.

"I know!" Miguel agrees, unable to spot her grin. "I-"

He yelps as Chel tries and fails to untangle one of the largest ones. Come to think of it, the ten knots left are all that size. She chews her life and considers the unthinkable.

"I can cut them out," she offers. "Your hair is thick enough that it might not be a problem." Maybe.

"...Why not just cut it off?"

Chel swallows her shock and eyes how much she can feasibly salvage. She brushes a spot not far beneath his ears. "This is as much as I can do."

"All right."

"Are you _sure_ about this?"

Miguel tugs at the tangles. "I've never been so sure. I am sick of Kuili tugging my hair. I am sick of spitting it out and tying it back. The only thing I like is when you or Tulio comb it out." He cranes his head back in concern. "You can still do that if it's short, right?"

"Of course," Chel promises.

Miguel stands still as she takes a knife to the first golden strands. They fall limply at her feet. She saves as much as she can, trims sparingly for a consistent length. Chel gapes as she beholds the finished product. Miguel puffs up in tentative bravado.

"I still look elegant, then?"

That's a word for it. Chel wordlessly hands him an obsidian mirror, polished to near perfect clarity. Miguel preens at his reflection, combing fingers through his shorter style, The hair bounces freely as he tosses his head.

"Better," he purrs. "Much better."

In this shape, at least. Chel hopes his true form will simply have a shorter mane, and not be missing the majority of it down his neck.

His hand curls through his beard. Some time ago it had made him appear kingly. Now it has grown long and straggly. He blinks hopefully at her.

Chel trims it back little by little, terrified of taking too much. Whenever she thinks her task down, Miguel frowns down at his own reflection and demands it even shorter. By the time he finishes his beard is short and stylishly cut, just framing his chin. He rubs his fingers over it.

"We can always just shave it off and start from scratch," Chel jokes.

"Absolutely not!" Miguel lowers the mirror, quirking a grin at her that does very strange things to her stomach. "Really, how do I look?"

"F-"

Chel clamps down on her impulsive answer not a moment too late. Miguel's brow scrunches.

"Fair? I just look _fair_ like... like some common prince?"

"Fantastic," Chel lies. "You look fantastic."

Miguel laughs at the joke, tossing back his head. "Because I _am_ fantastic."

Chel eyes his starburst mark, not so stark against his skin anymore. The sun has tanned him darker than Tulio. Surely that's all there is to it.

"You most certainly are," she agrees.

It's not the first f-adjective jumping to mind anymore. Her first instinctive reply is hardly so innocent.

...Maybe it's just the haircut, trimming away more of his true self to sell the human con a little better.

It better just be the hair cut.

* * *

One moment, he is drowning in an endless dark, the bodies of his people thrashing around him. His cloven hooves pummel against them as he strains for a surface he will never break. The next he snorts awake to discover himself human as ever and drooling into a pillow. Ugh. The earth quaking beneath him is merely the Obsidian Jaguar storming back home for the day. Miguel might almost call the wake-up call blase by now, if the Jaguar God's mere mention still does not turn his blood to ice.

Miguel dresses, slings his guitar over his shoulder, and departs the palace without breakfast. If he eats later then he catch the birds while they're still fresh and hopefully find some inspiration for an original composition.

Manoa is just waking up. He beams at everyone he passes. Most smile back. Some still avert their eyes out of bashfulness... or something else. Tzekel-Kan's warriors seem trained out of showing any positive emotion.

Miguel settles down on a stoop near the jungle edge. Most birds are squawking parrots far too much in love with their piercing voices, but some actual talent filters through their noisy chatter. He idly strums his guitar, admiring their vibrant plumage.

Though this jungle sounds little like his wood, Miguel knows an alarm when he hears one. His fingers clench around the instrument as the distress call ripple through the birds until it reaches those right above his head.

A scream, high and shrill, echoes in the distance. Miguel lowers his guitar. Long before he hears pounding hooves, he stands and drifts to the jungle edge. His breath hitches at the pale shape that thunders out from the trees.

It is no unicorn. Miguel knows that long before he sees him. His whinny is too deep, his movements to heavy. Still, Miguel throws out his arms to stop his mad dash. The stallion rears furiously back, eyes rolling.

Miguel does not shrink back. He stands his ground, certain as only a unicorn can be certain. After a long minute of furious stamping and snorting, the horse finally looks him in the eye. He falls back onto all four hooves, nostrils flaring. His ears twitch in bewilderment.

"I know, I know," Miguel says softly. The stallion does not flinch away when he presses a gentle hand to his muzzle. "Not exactly the shape you were expecting for me, eh?"

The stallion nickers.

For a long while Miguel simply strokes his nose, murmuring until the horse calms. Only then does his eye move to the stallion's body. His pale gray coat is marred by the vines and branches that tore at him through his wild charge. Much of the blood is not his own, but caked and dried from hours prior. His reins are snapped. His leather saddle is a shredded mess. What happened to his rider is no mystery.

"You are a very brave horse to have survived the Obsidian Jaguar," Miguel consoles. He wanly gestures at his human form. "As you can see, I did not escape so unscathed."

The horse snorts.

"Perhaps that is for the best," he sighs. "Better that you lost a stupid master than a loved one."

A rider stupid enough to march a greedy force of conquerors through treacherous jungle, to face a war god incarnate. They must have been the very same Miguel spotted as plumes of distant smoke, all those long weeks ago. Now it almost seems like a different lifetime.

Miguel shakes his head and returns to the present, where he remains very much a man and not a unicorn. His fingers gently trace around the gashes in the stallion's quivering flanks, the red streaks on his neck where his rider had tried gripping for dear life. Despite concentrating very hard on how foul those wounds look on such a graceful form, nothing happens. Of course it doesn't.

Miguel scrubs an arm across his forehead, the loss of his horn more stark than it's been for days now. He stoops to pick up his guitar.

"Come on, old boy. Let's go get you cleaned up."

The stallion whinnies. Miguel blinks. Once he would simply accept the sound at face value. Now his mind, squished into a human skull, feels compelled to translate.

"Altivo?" he tries.

The stallion bobs his head. Miguel grins. Side by side, they stride through the streets to the promise of medical care and all the apples the poor boy can stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, the word Chel almost blurts out is indeed what you're thinking of. It's not one she or Tulio would have used a couple of weeks ago, when the unicorn was still so new and miserable to this form. But now he's worn in this skin a bit more, just like the name Miguel, and by gods is it starting to show.
> 
> I originally had a different end implied for Cortes near the end of this story. Letting him run into the Jaguar God seemed fitting enough.


	14. The Talk

Altivo's wounds are not miraculously healed when the healer first washes and salves them. Without magic healing takes days at the least. Miguel soon takes charge. Human healing is not simply touching a horn to an injury and willing it gone. It takes patience and hygiene and knowledge of a hundred different remedies. He studies them hard as he can, prodding the healers for knowledge or helping them in the simpler tasks. His partners are absorbed in their own studies, after all, sometimes for hours on end. The least he can do is find something more than music and roughhousing with the chief's boys to keep himself busy.

The claw marks and bruises on Altivo start to scab and fade without ever once becoming infected. Miguel puffs up in pride.

Eventually there comes a day where Altivo's aches fade enough for him to gallop down one of the open training grounds at Manoa's outskirts. Miguel grins as the stallion circles the field, though he cannot help a twinge of envy.

After his gallop Altivo slows to a trot by Miguel, sides heaving in satisfaction. The man laughs and pats the horse's neck. "Well, old boy, feeling better then?"

Altivo stares at him. Miguel uncertainly draws his hand back. The stallion gently butts his head against his shoulder, nosing him over toward his back. He does not take no for an answer.

To be polite Miguel finally surrenders and awkwardly clambers onto his back. Altivo snorts and shifts just so until Miguel is seated properly instead of slouching like a bag of potatoes. Miguel must not only cling for dear life to the stallion's mane, but hold his leg's firmly against Altivo's sides, move as best he can with the motions.

Miguel is a nervous wreck after Altivo slowly trots around the training grounds. Such a sedate pace is human running speed. Their surroundings pass by too quick for Miguel's eyes, having grown accustomed to a slower pace of life.

"T-Thank you, Altivo," he stutters out. "That was quite... That was something."

Slowly Miguel eases his fingers from their death grip around Altivo's mane. He's about to slide off for the safety of solid ground when the stallion snorts in warning. Miguel tightens his hold just before Altivo surges forward. A high-pitched squeal escapes him.

Altivo does not glide over the earth like a ghost. He _thunders,_ hooves striking against the dirt with a horse's brute power. His muscles heave beneath Miguel, his strides near in time with his huffing breath. Trees and buildings pass in a dizzying whirl. The wind whips at Miguel's clothes, screams through his ears and his hair. It almost feels like coming home.

First Altivo breezes into a canter, easing into a trot and then a plodding walk. When he finally stops, sides slathered in sweat, Miguel slides bonelessly off him. Hysterical laughter bubbles out of him.

"A-Again!"

Altivo flicks him with his tail. Red-faced, Miguel scrambles off the ground to properly cool the horse down, running a cool, wet rag over his sweaty sides.

By the time he stumbles back to the palace, Miguel is a sweaty, smelly wreck himself. The servants he greets ogle him as they haven't since the beginning of his stay. Only now instead of breathless awe their eyes sparkle and they bite back smiles. Miguel takes it all in stride. He _is_ a mess.

"Hi, Chel!" he chirps when he sights her in the hall.

His partner gapes at him. Then she bites down on her lip until her cheeks go red from the effort. Laughter explodes out of her anyway.

Miguel cocks his head, not offended in the slightest. Not from Chel. "What's so funny?"

Wordlessly she tugs him into her room to face the mirror. His hair is no longer a long, unholy mess of knots. Instead it has fluffed itself up like one very ruffled, indignant bird. Miguel bursts out laughing himself.

Once more he's seated before the mirror. This time the brush slides far more easily through his tamed hair. For once Miguel can't admire his own reflection. His eyes are riveted to Chel's hair, thick and black and sleek. "How come yours is always so perfect?"

"Patience, care, and lots of hard work," she replies easily.

"I'll say," he sighs, impulsively running a hand through those silken strands. Too late does he remember his manners and his grimy, grimy touch. He flinches back. "I-I'm-"

Chel laughs. "Don't worry about it." She playfully tosses her hair, for a glorious moment the elegant slopes of her shoulders fully bared. "An artist appreciates her hard work being admired once in a while."

From his reflection Miguel can see his mouth fall open like a fish. He plasters on a grin instead.

"Yes," he says a beat too late. "Quite right."

Chel swiftly finishes brushing his hair, shooing him out for a proper bath. The warmth of her touch lingers long after.

* * *

Their toddler does not go down easy tonight. His teething pains have him up screaming at an ungodly hour. Tannabok sweeps his boy up into his arms, for his soft embrace and low, rumbling voice lulls little Kuili off. Once he's warmly tucked in again Tannabok checks on the baby and his four oldest boys. For once they aren't merely pretending to be asleep, but out cold. Even their energy has its limits.

Not quite ready to return to bed Tannabok wanders outside to savor a cigar. There is no view quite so grand as one of the balconies overlooking the timeless sea.

He is not alone. As he steps onto the balcony another soul whirls around.

Tannabok freezes. For a moment he thinks back to that aloof and elusive lord that never spoke a word to him, only roamed his halls like a restless shade.

"Good evening, Lord Miguel," he automatically addresses in that reserved, placating tone normally reserved for Tzekel-Kan.

Lord Miguel coughs, shoulders hunching sheepishly, and Tannabok's old uncertainly falls away. "Er, good evening, Chief Tanni." Tannabok bites back a smile at an affectionate nickname Lord Miguel uses like his given title. "Don't mind me, I was just-"

"Stay, if you'd like," the chief returns casually. "It's a nice night for watching the sea."

"Yes," his guest returns weakly. "It is."

Lord Miguel skitters down to the edge of the rail. Intuition plants Tannabok squarely at the center. He lights his cigar, savoring it. He and his guest drift in silence.

In the early days of his stay Lord Miguel stared out to sea for hours, still and impassive as a statue. His stillness has fallen away. He hunches over the railing, shifting from one arm to the next as his stance grows painful, worrying at his lip or rubbing his forehead as if pained. He's too lost in his thoughts to notice Tannabok watching him from the corner of his eye. Not too long ago Lord Miguel had stared right back whenever someone had surreptitiously tried to spy on him.

"Have you yet found what you were looking, my lord?"

"B-Beg pardon?" Lord Miguel stutters.

"You came to this land on pilgrimage," Tannabok reminds him. He taps his cigar thoughtfully. "I hope you've made progress in your spiritual search. You've seen more at peace these last few weeks?"

"I-I have?" Lord Miguel contemplates his own question. Then he nods. "Yes, I have. But I still haven't found what I came here for. Not really."

"I am sure the answer will come in time, Lord Miguel," Tannabok offers patiently.

Lord Miguel slumps morosely over the railing. "I don't think I ever will."

He's so lost and forlorn, so utterly unlike the icy ghost he was, that Tannabok inches down the railing to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. Miguel freezes at the contact. He does not shy away from his touch. When he starts trembling Tannabok pulls his hand back. He barely does before Miguel slams into his arms. Tannabok instinctively hugs him. This a man who sometimes seems no older than his boys, who at times is utterly happy in the moment and others adrift as a ship lost at sea.

After an eternity Miguel releases a shuddering breath and pulls away. He wipes at surprisingly dry eyes. "T-Thank you, Chief Tanni. I didn't know how much I needed that."

"To need help sometime is human, Miguel," Tannabok answers simply. "It is human to give it in return."

Miguel brushes his hair back from his forehead. His silence draws on.

"Was it a nightmare, my lord?" Tannabok ventures at last.

"Um, no." Despite the dark Miguel's blush is bright and clear. "...The utter opposite, in fact."

"Oh?" Tannabok searches his face intently. Miguel refuses to meet his gaze. _"Oh."_

This is a grown lord who should have years of experience with his body. This is a man who sometimes seems clueless as a child.

Sweeping an arm over Miguel's shoulder, Tannabok guides him to a bench for a talk apparently long overdue. It's a talk he might as well practice to perfection now, because some years from now he'll need it for one boy after another.

For a moment Miguel stares in utter bewilderment. When his eyes finally widen in understanding, Tannabok expects him to storm away at the implication a grown man needs this sort of advice. But Miguel is enraptured. Only once Tannabok finishes does his very attentive student fire off a string of questions that proves this all indeed new territory.

It is not Tannabok's place to question why an adult is so unsure of their own body and perfectly natural desires. He fears he half-knows the answer anyway. What matters is what Miguel is more at ease with himself, with things he might very much like to start exploring in the near future. Whatever is simmering between him and his 'servants' might now be safely handled instead of boiling over.

* * *

"Ouch! Son of a-"

"Language, partner," Tulio chides teasingly. "The sort I thought I'd never hear from you."

Miguel pouts, dabbing at his shaving nick. "The razor started it."

"The razor held by your hands. Do you want me to-"

"No!" Miguel snatches the razor back like a child. "This is something I need to do on my own."

His short, stylish beard only lasts so long on its own. After help from Tulio and Chel, Miguel had finally insisted on learning how to do this on his own. His partners, who remember a unicorn with cloven hoofs, are naturally skeptical of their beautiful idiot handling sharp steel so close to his vital arteries. Miguel is a graceful musician. Such elegance does not yet extend to many other things regarding hands.

Tulio sighs and resumes his own grooming. Looking dashingly rugged is an art form. Shave too close and he looks sloppy. Let the stubble grow out too much and he just looks like the seedy kind of vagabond.

His gaze catches wide green eyes gawking at his reflection. "What, Miguel?"

"I understand now," Miguel blurts out.

"Understand _what_ now?"

"Your appeal," Miguel murmurs, low and wondrous. "And I almost made you shave it off!"

Tulio lowers his blade with a frown, before finally recalling that distant conversation when a unicorn had tried convincing him to shave off his scruff in the name of anonymity. His pithy response withers and dies, because Miguel has turned away from their reflections to stare at him directly. Intently.

Tulio's lips curve upward. So this is one of _those_ dreams after all, the kind that start mundane before getting to the good stuff. Chel should be coming in any-

_Erk._

The fingers ghosting over his stubbly chin are very warm and very, very real. Tulio stumbles back and lands flat on his ass.

Miguel kneels down in concern, unwittingly bringing the problem back in close range. "Tulio, are you all right?"

Briefly Tulio remembers a unicorn untouchable in his grace, the sort of beauty that made old women weep and haunted the dreams of children when they grew old themselves. Upon the transformation Miguel had been a man as beautiful, ethereal as moonlight. His face had been one immortalized in stone or stained glass, impossible to find outside of dreams. Tulio appreciates masterpieces. He does not _fantasize_ about them.

Now Miguel is darkened by the sun, his golden hair sheared short. There are guitar callouses on his fingers and three shaving nicks on his face. His warm, open face. The same that's been infiltrating Tulio's dirtier dreams for weeks. Because this Miguel is very much mortal.

Tulio fixates on the starburst square between Miguel's eyes, once graced by his horn. At the beginning it had stood stark against his skin. As Miguel's skin had reached a normal skin tone under exposure to sunlight some fading had been unavoidable. Miguel's skin has long settled on its final tan. The starburst has faded since.

"Tulio," Miguel repeats. "Tulio, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he squeaks out immediately, plastering on a grin that would have convinced the unicorn. "Everything is fine. I just slipped."

Miguel's brows furrow in deeper concern. Now he's human enough to hear the lie behind those words.

"Sorry," Tulio continues, rubbing at his neck in slightly more sincere sheepishness. "I just got... lost in thought."

"About what?"

"Hermes Trismegistus," Tulio blurts out, half-honestly. "I've been thinking about him a lot lately, considering..."

"Considering?"

Tulio gestures at his partner's all-too-human form. "Duh, Miguel."

Miguel frowns down at himself. Green eyes blink dazedly. "Oh. Right."

There is cluelessness and there is utter forgetfulness. Tulio shivers and staggers to his feet before Miguel can reach out a helping hand and tempt him further.

Tulio rakes his brain over what Hermes Trismegistus had said of the unicorn, the very first he had foolishly transformed into a man. When had his mentor given up on that man's true form? What had been the point of no return? Gods help him, he didn't know.

Gods help them all.

Tulio blurts out a very real excuse about needing to catch up on his studies, pushing Miguel from his room.

Green eyes blink after him, hurt and confused.


	15. The Brink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our idiots in love all prove, in their own unique ways, to be idiots.

Chel's morning begins as it almost always does, scouring various temple archives for all records she can find on pure white beasts and the Jaguar God. Her eyes flick over titles and finds nothing new. She must have scoured them all. Every promising lead has pages ripped from it or sections torn from its scrolls. There is nothing about unicorns, why Balam Qoxtok hunts them every night, or how Tzekel-Kan gained the eerie longevity that only Tulio matches.

...At least in the archives she _can_ search. Her protection as King Tannabok's guest only extends so far. What acolytes did not allow her entrance to their temple libraries, she has sneaked and sweet talked and borrowed without permission. The only place left to look is the Jaguar God's temple itself. Chel refuses to ever again step foot before the altar where her brother was brutally murdered. Tzekel-Kan must be waiting to pounce on her there, to charge her with blasphemy and treachery. She will not play into his claws like some-

"Ah," purrs a voice that haunts her nightmares. "I've been looking for you. Chela, is it not?"

Chel sinks her teeth into her tongue to force down her scream. She whirls around. Her back does not slam a bookcase. Instead she skitters down the aisle, stooping low into a bow. Tzekel-Kan's obsidian eyes bear into her.

"M-My lord," she demurs. "I am but a humble servant. How can one lowly as I ever be worthy of your attention?"

"It would be so bold of me to approach Lord Miguel so directly. He was so imperious when he first arrived to our city." His eyes glint. "Alas, I have glimpsed him out among the people. I fear he forgets himself."

Chel shivers at how close that thinly veiled thought lands. Miguel's recollections of their travels before the Obsidian Jaguar have grown... hazy. He longer waxes poetic about his forest like he used to. He assumes they slept in barns for budgetary reasons, laments he should have bought a guitar years ago.

"I serve Lord Miguel," she lies, for they and Tulio remain equal partners in their quest. "It is not my place to command him."

The high priest glances at the bookcases with thinly veiled disdain. "And so Lord Miguel commands you among Lady Eupana's archives?"

The Lady of the Sea is the matriarch of the Manoan pantheon, mother to the Jaguar God himself. Tzekel-Kan has never been pleased their history looks out to the ocean, and not the war and terror birthed from its waters.

Chel squares her shoulders. "Lord Miguel came to our city seeking enlightenment. He leaves no stone unturned. Why cannot he find it here, when Lady Eupana's wisdom runs deep and vast?"

Tzekel-Kan clasps his hands together, stalking another step forward. "Instead of tearing Lady Eupana's temple apart for the third time, perhaps your master will be better serviced in _my_ temple. I would be honored to... _enlighten_ him upon our Lord of War and his unquestionable truths."

"I will pass your request along to him, my lord," she answers tightly.

He bares in his teeth in a smile. "See that you do, Chela. Before our dear lord loses himself entirely."

With another bow, Chel walks slowly from his presence. Blind panic only excites a predator. Only out of his sight does she break for the palace. She needs to find Tulio _now._

To reach his room, she must first pass Miguel's. Guitar music filters out from inside. Every time a melody starts to build, it breaks off and starts again. And again. Chel smiles. Miguel's safe and sound under Chief Tannabok's roof, even if he is having a creative block. She cracks the door open and slips inside.

Miguel is no longer satisfied to remain a mere guitar player. His singing voice is strong and clear a bell, as a unicorn's cry. What he lacks are compelling lyrics to pair to it. His bedroom floor is littered with crumpled compositions. Already having begun learning to read under Tulio's cons, a stubborn sense of perfection has added writing to his repertoire. His handwriting, at first slow and painstaking, grows smoother by the day.

Hands are no longer a novel concept. A compelling song yet eludes him.

Miguel is sprawled out on the railing, guitar in hand and gaze turned out to the sea. He doesn't even realize she's there. He tries a melody twice before adding words upon it. _"In the sea, the fish have learned to fly. On a moonlit night, on wings of silver, as the silver stars sail serenely by. Do they know where... where..._ Blast!" The guitar squeals as the tortured artist throws his head into his hands. "They're fish! What are fish looking for down there?"

"Inspiration?" Chel pipes up.

Miguel squeals, flailing off the rail. His hands fly protectively around his guitar. He falls flat on his ass.

Chel rushes to his side. "I'm sorry!"

Miguel beams even as his cheeks flush bright red. "S-Sorry about that, Chel. Didn't see you there."

"I've never been able to sneak up on you before," she points out. "Not while you were awake."

The unicorn's senses had been too keen, his paranoia too high after that one time Tulio returned from town with glitter and an impish glint in his eye.

Miguel shifts his guitar into one arm to rub sheepishly at his sore neck. "Guess I have lot more going on in my head these days."

"I'll say." Chel offers a hand to help him up. "Why do you want to write about the sea?"

His eyes flick out to the waves rolling in to shore. "Write what captures you, right? The sea is... nice. Steady. Familiar. Like the sun. Or the cat creep that rampages out of the city every night. What _else_ can I write about?"

"Your home?" she tries.

"My... My what?"

Chel appraises him for joking obliviousness. Miguel's brows are furrowed. "You know, your forest? Your beech trees, your special pool, all the woodland animals you used to always tell us about."

She searches his eyes for the home he holds dearest to his heart. The unicorn's emerald eyes had been fathomless. In them Chel had not seen her own reflection, but rather the depths of his wood, and the creatures that dwelt within. Even set into the face of an inhumanly handsome young man, she had known him still. She'd have known those eyes set into the eyes of the smallest mouse or the meanest shark.

Miguel's eyes are still vivid green. Their depths are no longer fathomless. In them Chel recognizes loss and bewilderment and no small amount of fear. She might know this man as she's come to know Tulio. She sees herself reflected, and nothing more.

"Partner," she presses. "Why are we here?"

"We're... We're..."

His fingers squeeze tighter around her own. With a chill Chel realizes he's never let go of her hand.

Gently, Chel pries her fingers from his grip so he cannot cling to this guise of humanity. Instead she steadily places her hands upon his shoulders to ground him to himself. She tries very hard not to think about how lean his muscles feel or how his heart hammers so hard she can feel it beneath her.

"Unicorns," she says. "The Obsidian Jaguar has stolen them all away, all but you. You are the last unicorn. You came here to find the others, and to set them free. And so you shall."

Slowly, the old depths flood back into Miguel's eyes, until they are unknowable as the emerald sea. Chel holds him as though her faith alone keeps him tethered to himself.

Below them, the balcony trembles. A rumble splits the air. Balam Qoxtok restlessly turns in his sleep, stirred by the one that got away.

Miguel's face drains of color as he fully remembers the terror that hunts him. Chel hates herself to feel relieved by it. While he's deathly pale he better reminds her of the unicorn so new in his human skin, before it had become far too comfortable for its own good.

"My people... My people might be all dead. My mother. There might be nothing to be saved." Miguel twists his hands around the neck of his guitar. "I... I don't know the way down to him."

Chel hears despair in that tone, something dangerously close to an excuse. She grips tighter to his shoulders. "I will go with you. I don't know the way down to the Jaguar either, but there must be one. Tulio will find it, or I will. We'll both be there with you, no matter what."

Miguel's lip trembles. "B-Because we're partners, Chel?"

"Exactly, partner." Chel shakily smiles. "Tulio and I promised, remember?"

Miguel's fathomless eyes search her own. Then they flicker down to the hands upon his shoulders, before staring out to sea.

"...Right," he croaks. "Partners."

* * *

Tulio's door slams open, then shut. He wildly looks up from a spell book to behold the panting, flustered goddess before him.

"...Hey, Chel, what's-"

She tackles him from his chair onto the bed, and his mind goes white.

Sex should be something light, something fun. A fling there and one night stand there takes the itch off, makes a few more hours in his probably eternal life pass a little quicker. Tulio doesn't need any more distractions on top of that. The nature of his curse (and his nature in general) don't allow for much else.

Chel's the most consistent sexual partner he's had in... ever. All those weeks on the road and then their time in Manoa is adding up. Their promise to the unicorn, to Miguel, tethers to them to one place, to teach other. Tulio's waking hours are devoted to ripping tomes apart on gods and unicorns. He doesn't have the time and energy left at the day for wooing additional options. His breaks are reserved for Miguel dragging him around the city and... escapades with Chel.

They've been hunting down each other every night, partly to escape their lack of progress in helping Miguel and then to lay next to each other and rant about that lack of progress. They need _something_ positive to channel their frustrations into.

Tulio also suspects a large amount of that mutual frustration involves a certain green-eyed forbidden blond. He and Chel try keeping those fantasies to themselves.

When it's over, he lies boneless in bed beside her. _"Wow."_

"Yeah," she echoes, staring glumly up at the ceiling. "Wow."

Tulio knows that look. He sighs and rolls onto his side to face her. "What did he forget this time?"

Chel's breath hitches. "His... His forest." Her dark eyes flit away from his own. "Or at least why he loved it so much."

Tulio bites his lip. The unicorn's life had once revolved around one enchanted forest in the middle of nowhere. Those first weeks outside it had involved people mistaking him for a dumb horse, long silences, and then the grand finale of being abducted by Dama Fortuna. Tulio had helped him discover how wide the world truly was; that towns held more than danger, that even hack magicians could make decent friends... At least until that hack magician's own idiocy had trapped that unicorn in mortal flesh.

"He's found more things to love," he points out. "His guitar, the chief's kids, that horse he nursed back to health. Those are here and now. His life before, when all he knew was magic..." Tulio sighs. "It's little better than a dream. Not until he gets perfect memory back alongside the rest of what I took from him."

Chel's eyes widen. "Is that what happened to you?"

Tulio shrugs wanly. "My life was all magic beforehand, remember? Hermes Trismegistus enchanted me because I sucked as his student." He strains to recall a life before he was cursed for eternal ineptitude, when he had still feared the wrong word might one day get him stabbed in a back alley. "The years before the curse are a blur, but so are the ones immediately after it. The human mind just wasn't meant to hold all that."

"Will... What if one day he just forgets who he is?"

Despite her true fear, Tulio can't help his grin. "Chel, his personality hasn't changed one bit. He's just... opened up a bit more."

The unicorn had grown to indulge children and those who marveled at his grace. Without mortal ignorance and immortal pretenses to hold him back, Miguel is as friendly with everybody as he once had only been for Chel and Tulio.

She frowns thoughtfully, not the least bit comforted. "What if he forgets _what_ he was?"

Tulio's raked his brains a lot on Hermes Trismegistus, written down everything he's recalled of that unicorn his mentor first saved. "In the twilight of his own life, Hermes Trismegistus tried tracking down the unicorn he had once saved so foolishly. By then the unicorn was an old man himself, who had slayed many monsters and saved countless lives beside his partner. A life well-lived by most accounts. Hermes wanted to see what that man recalled from his early days and what... what he might regret."

"Did... Did your teacher ever find him?"

Tulio smiles sadly. "I don't think so, no."

If Hermes Trismegistus had, he'd never told his failure of an apprentice. Such existential pondering was beyond an idiot that couldn't even turn cream into butter.

...Or maybe Hermes Trismegistus had, back when Tulio had grown too complacent in slacking ineptitude to further wonder over the mysteries of magic. Or maybe that story was just another lost in that fog of petty tricks and petty theft, yet another lesson Tulio had never realized he'd need until it had slipped through his fingers.

Chel's eyes grow even darker, as she shoves her own secrets down deep. Tulio pretends not to notice.

"He... He wasn't the last unicorn."

"Miguel isn't either," he mumbles. "We'll find the others."

Unspoken between them is the possibility Balam Qoxtok simply swallowed them all. An immortal can be lethal to a fellow immortal.

"What's the... What's the point of no return?" she asks instead.

Tulio groans, raking his fingers through his mussed up hair. "Purity probably helps."

Chel snorts. " _Pure of heart,_ Tulio. Miguel said so himself. You and I weren't exactly pure in any other way when he latched onto us."

He swallows thickly. "That first morning he was beautiful, wasn't he? Like an angel might be palatable to mortal eyes so they don't melt them."

She blinks. "That's... one way to put it."

"Beautiful like a statue?" he stresses. "Beautiful in a way that _inspires_ and not _incites."_

They sigh at each other. 'Inhuman' and 'exalting' are no longer the first words they think of to describe their partner. 'Attractive' and 'sexy' are definitely up there. He might be even downright 'fuckable,' because Tulio's magic and immortal grace somehow spat out the perfect partner for the both of them.

"Oh," she breathes. "Oh, no."

"But that's mortal flesh and, um, earthly pleasures." _Don't think if attraction goes both ways, Tulio, don't you - Ugh, too late._ He pinches the bridge of his nose. "His soul is still a unicorn's where it counts." At least for now.

"How so?"

"Unicorns sorrow, they do not lament or regret." Tulio clenches a fist. "You ever see Miguel cry, Chel, or tear himself apart over a mistake he made? He physically _can't."_ He falls quiet for a long minute, just to let that sink in. "His emotional extremes are different than ours. Unicorns can't hold grudges. They either trample an enemy dead or run off and forget about them."

"I get it." Her eyes skew shut. "He can't return to his forest, so he finds new favorites. Ones that won't matter when he regains his true shape and unicorns return to the world once more."

"Got it in one." A beat. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"We're partners."

"Partners," Chel intones. "Us and... Miguel." The alias that is _just_ an alias. "We have a plan. Find the unicorns, somehow overthrow the Jaguar God, and return him to his true shape. We don't... need to throw anything else into the mix."

"Miguel is off-limits?"

She nods resolutely. "Shake on it."

They shake on it.

"We are walking the razor's edge right now with the cat creep," Tulio tells him. "We're supposed to be his friends. We must avoid giving into temptation, right?"

"Right."

They gaze into each other's eyes for moral support. Then they groan and drop their heads into their hands.

"Gods, this is gonna be _tougher_ than I thought."

"You think?" Chel hisses. "He wouldn't let go of my hand today."

Tulio thinks it over. "When this is all said and done, we head north."

"...North?"

"To one of those kingdoms with nothing but blonds."

Chel bites her lip with something far more than excitement. "Works for me."

They shake on that too.

* * *

Miguel spends the rest of the day on his balcony. The endless roll of the waves at least gives his eyes something to focus on. The soft shush of the tide upon the rocks below provides noise other than the voices in his head. Sunset should inspire an artist. This one fills him only with dread. The dying sun stains the whitecaps red as if the sea is burning, or all within it his bleeding.

As darkness creeps forward, he stumbles back inside. There is nowhere to run. He knows this very well. All he can do is sink against the back corner of his room, huddle into himself, and _wait._

When the Obsidian Jaguar departs his lair, the whole whole palace shakes. His snarl splits the air like thunder. Tonight he hunts like he hasn't in weeks. He's scented his quarry right beneath his nose.

Miguel's human heart hammers in his chest. Once he vomited at the thought every beat brought him closer to death. Now mortality prevents death from finding him that very night.

 _Mortal,_ his heart seems to chant in assurance. _Mortal mortal mortal._

The Jaguar God cares not for mortals. The night wind shifts with his inhale. With a furious shriek he charges on into the night.

Miguel sighs, slumping wearily against the wall. He feels as if the Obsidian Jaguar had driven up and down the jungle again. Not that he'd stood a chance of outrunning that nightmare in one shape or the other.

Green eyes flicker to the door and the warm light that spills from the hallway beyond. Miguel doesn't feel up to facing people tonight, not even his partners. Especially not his partners. It might be a ghost of his old pride rearing its head or that instinct for solitude. It might be something else entirely.

Fully clothed, he slips into bed and bundles himself in his covers. The clothing that had once seemed to unnecessary has been another reminder of who he is. Unicorns shine in honest grace, free as they day they were foaled. A man is more than his skin, is also in what he chooses to wear. Tonight Miguel would prefer to stink up his covers with mortal sweat than have the Obsidian Jaguar catch his scent again.

He does not expect sleep to find him. It does so anyway.

_In his dreams, he walks through a forest still and silent. His calls for another living soul are returned by only his own echoes. He fears he might never make it out before he miraculously stumbles into the sun, toward life and light._

_He does not find one friend. No one even sees him as an equal. His greetings, his pleas, even his insults, are all ignored as if he never had a voice at all. They do not know his name or care to know it. They call him horse and colt and pretty boy when they chase after him with belts and ropes. He runs from them as he must hunters and their hounds. The sting of an arrow through his neck would not hurt more than a lasso._

_When he inevitably must lie down to rest, those wicked hands catch him. He is trapped behind iron bars, leered at as a senseless beast. His cries for help are choked down by magic. When his death descends from the pale yellow moon, he laughs and embraces it, for now he is alone no longer._

_Yet the nightmare cannot, will not, hold him. He runs into another nightmare, with war and wickedness thundering behind him. There is no escape. The Jaguar chases him until his heart gives out, until he vanishes down the same maw that devoured his mother._

_Until he is run to the end of the earth, and then off it. His feet leave solid ground behind as he inhales seawater._

Green eyes snap open at dawn. He curls his knees to his chest and waits for his death to find him.

The Jaguar God rages himself down into sleep. He had found no unicorns.

A hysterical laugh bubbles out of Miguel. Of course. The Obsidian Jaguar isn't hunting _him._

He clambers out of bed, wriggling his toes against the cool stone floor and inhaling the crisp morning air. He savors the sensation of pulling on new clothes. Casting those sweaty old clothes down to the floor is almost like shedding a skin. Fingers rub at scratchy stubble escaping the confines of his beard.

Miguel appraises his reflection. His face is own. He carefully shaves his facial hair back into shape, before fussing with the bird's nest his hair has become on a bad night's sleep.

He hasn't always taken pride in his appearance. Miguel remembers his hair a tangled mane and beard, as if someone had hauled him out of the woods. His skin had been sickly pale, his eyes dark. He hadn't faced his reflection much at all. He hadn't cared for much of anything really.

The face before had been even _worse._ Miguel had obsessively scrutinized that silver skin for wrinkles, searched that golden hair for gray hairs like his body was turning to dust on him. That face had been devastating in its beauty, at once too close and too far from what it had previously been. It had been downright _inhuman,_ even alienating. No wonder people had been terrified as they'd been mesmerized by him.

Reluctantly, he brushes the hair back from his forehead. His blood chills.

Oh.

Oh no.

The starburst mark has darkened.

Trembling fingers trail the mark, ready to flinch back at the bite of magic. Nothing happens. It's only skin. He even prods at the center of the mark. And sighs in relief to discover the skull beneath smooth and painless.

Miguel turns his back to the mirror. He pulls on shoes and strides forth to face the day.

Despite the early hour, there are guards and servants bustling in the halls. He beams widely and greets each one by name.

"Good morning, Lord Miguel!" they call back.

Their warmth, their acknowledgement, shakes the last of the night chill from his bones. They know him better than he knows himself.

Miguel gleefully greets every horse down in the stable. It's Altivo he saddles up. Together they thunder off into the morning.

Altivo turns for their usual tracks and trails. Miguel bites his lip and gently tugs him elsewhere. They climb upward, on one of the mountain trails that lead up and out of the city. The warriors they pass only wave back. Miguel is an honored guest of Chief Tanni's. He and Altivo often ride up to the top to gaze upon Manoa's stunning views. There's nothing to worry about.

Nothing at all.

At the top, Altivo deeply breathes in the air and surveys the valley. His rider instead gazes out toward the jungle beyond. Even from this vantage point it looks to extend forever.

The day is young and Altivo fully healed. If they ride hard, they might be out of the Jaguar's range by nightfall. They can be _free;_ from the terror, from the scars that refuse to heal, from anyone else trying to use them for ill gain.

If asked, Altivo would run. He'd never stop. They'd be together.

Miguel exhales raggedly. His eyes itch, no matter how hard he rubs at them.

A snort startles him. Altivo's head is craned his way, dark eyes wide in concern.

He plasters on a grin and lowers a knuckle from dry, itchy eyes. "I'm fine, old boy. Really."

The horse's eyes narrow. Their stares stretch into a battle of wills.

Ah, to hell with pride.

Miguel numbly slides off the stallion. He throws his arms around that broad neck, burying his head into his mane. In turn Altivo angles his head around him in an equine embrace.

"I'm tired, Altivo," he breathes. "So, so tired."

Tired of running, tired of hiding, tired of being talked over. His own partners are doing to it to him, like he's a child best kept in the dark or even... even something less.

To remind him of his past, Chel had only pointed called him 'partner,' over and over. Like he had no name at all. Like his name wasn't _his_ name.

Chel and Tulio both have names. Every human being does, from Chief Tanni down to Tzekel-Kan, who can barely be called such. Altivo certainly owns his name. The nightmare Celaeno had been granted one. Even the Jaguar God has one, Balam Qoxtok, one supposed to be too sacred and secret for mere mortals to utter aloud. The only things without names are those without ties, without anyone to call them by.

He _isn't_ a thing, some... some nameless beast. Some fairy tale creature that now lives only in storybooks.

"My name is Miguel," he declares, "and I am called Miguel."

Altivo nickers.

He grins in response. "Damn right it is. And... And forget anyone who thinks otherwise."

Miguel's confidence falters as he ponders something. Why is he partners with Tulio and Chel again? He... He knew a second ago, didn't he?

A ghost of a memory shakes him. His fingers gently brush his wrist, the same one Tulio had clasped so very long ago, the same Chel had later taken.

They're partners. They'd all shaken on it.

Now they won't even touch him.

Gut churning, Miguel once more climbs atop Altivo. He weighs an aimless life only a horse at his side to a tortured relationship with partners who cannot consider him an equal. The choice between a life of freedom and one under the Jaguar God's shadow is no choice at all.

Then he ponders what might happen if he and Altivo are caught in the jungle after nightfall.

"Y-You never had breakfast either, did you?" Altivo spares him a withering snort. "Sorry, old boy. Let's go h... Well, let's go back."

The stallion immediately starts descending for that golden city on the shore, toward the life Miguel seems stuck with. Miguel shudders as the wind turns, and the heady scents of the jungle are blown back by a sharp, salty breeze.

Yesterday the sea had calmed him. Funny how today it fills him with some vast, unknown dread.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love The Last Unicorn, but the movie's songs are either really great or really... eh. I happen to quote adore 'In the Sea' and thought the first few lines fit a sappy artist who still thinks inspiration can only be found outside and not INside. Figures Miguel trails off when he does ; )
> 
> Readers of my main series might recognize Lady Eupana as the goddess of Lake Parime. For story's sake, here she is a sea goddess because Manoa is coastal.


	16. The Last Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the chieftess proves to be as diabolical as she is sweet.

Manoa is cleanly divided into two times - day and night. Merchants open up their stalls after sunrise and batten them down before the Jaguar God roars out with the evening. Children left to to run loose while the sun is up are called inside for dinner and bedtime. The shadow that prowls the borders at night means no child ever tarries home.

Miguel hasn't eaten supper in his rooms for weeks. He always dines the late afternoon with Chief Tanni, Miya, and their boys. He's practically become a staple for family dinners. His songs and stories keep the restless older boys entertained. Sometimes he alone can convince toddler Kuili to eat his mashed maize instead of flinging it across the table. After being too... too sick to eat last night, he looks forward for at least one thing returning to normal.

He's staring at a blank piece of paper, trying and failing to put words on the page, when the door knocks.

Miguel's heart flutters. He leaps up from his chair, smoothing down his shirt and checking his breath. He hopes and dreads who might be there.

"Come in!" he calls lightly.

"Good afternoon, Lord Miguel."

Despite his relief, he also deflates at the face in the door. "Oh, hello, Miya."

The chieftess' eyes sweep over his clean floor. She smiles. "How's the songwriting today?"

"It's coming along," he answers brightly.

Tossing all those failed drafts into the fire had been oddly cathartic. That song about the sea had never come together. He just could never decide what secret those fish were supposed to be hiding. Many other songs were too melodramatic to ever see the light of day.

One or two written in the dead of night, with only the moon and sea for company, had downright terrified him. What on earth had ever possessed him to write about wandering man's lonely road? Or about... searching for something out reach, unable to find it now that so much had changed. All those dark, secret thoughts are ash now. Out of sight, out of mind.

Miya's voice stirs from him from his thoughts. "The boys are eating dinner and going to bed early tonight."

"Ah." Miguel hears the insinuation in her tone loud and clear. "You and Chief Tanni have... plans, then?"

She laughs. "We love our boys, but every once in a while we adults deserve an adult dinner. I came to invite you and your companions along."

"A-Are you sure?"

"Of course. The months have been long and hard for all of us." Miya winks. "We all can use a break now and then."

Miguel's smile falters as he considers the partners that bury themselves day and night in their research. He grins that they have no choice but to take the night off. "We certainly can!"

It's unspeakably rude to deny their hosts' invitation like that. Finally they can all be together without that cloud of worry hanging over their heads. Just like things used to be.

When Miya leaves, Miguel skips over to his collection of clothes. He agonizes over his decision like Chel had that dress she had bought for their journey. While Miguel always has healthy pride in his appearance, today he feels especially driven to look his best. Must be the special occasion. He's never been invited to an adult dinner before.

Miguel's wardrobe is bright and vibrant, all colorful fabric purchased in Manoa. Black is much too somber. White and pale gray do terrible things to his complexion, and his self-image. He can't imagine how he get along with it. He settles on his best red shirt. It's his favorite color, and contrasts nicely against his hair and eyes.

Satisfied, Miguel turns to the mirror. A relieved smile breaks across his face.

The starburst is fading again, like a healing bruise, or a star just about to fade away with dawn. It won't mar his forehead too much longer.

Miguel waggles his brows. He pauses, then practices his smile. No ordinary grin will do tonight. He needs to master the one Tulio used on his travels; one that makes his eyes smolder, the heat that had attracted men and women to him like bees to honey. It's a fine line to look inviting, but not desperate; composed, not constipated. Daring, and not about to die of fright if he gets rejected.

Under his feet, the Jaguar God rumbles forth on his futile hunt. Miguel laughs after him.

"Better look next time!" he almost, _almost_ calls out the window.

Not even he's foolish enough to provoke the Obsidian Jaguar.

Not ever again.

* * *

When Chieftess Miya knocks on his door to invite him down to a late dinner tonight, her tone is light and genial. From the Chieftess of Manoa, such a friendly offer is practically an ultimatum. Tulio certainly can't afford the royal hosts who have been so generous with their rooms, their resources, and their _time._ He and Chel have no choice but to take the night off.

Also, Miguel will most definitely be there... surrounded by wine, music, and pretty young servants that have long lost their fear of him. He's not the untouchable lord anymore to them, but the idiot attractive as he is oblivious. Tulio and Chel both need to be there to beat bad decisions off with sticks.

Tonight they'll be without their usual snot-nosed company. Tulio dresses his best only because he doesn't need to worry about toddlers slinging their maize all over him. His robe is surprisingly obedient tonight, folding into a sleek black vest not shabby in the least. He wears it only because it's his, because it's the one thing he's carried since his apprenticeship under Hermes Trismegistus. It's not like he has any one to impress or anything.

Tulio spends nearly an hour fussing with his hair. He blames the humid air that keeps frizzing his well-oiled locks.

Nearly late, he stumbles out of his room the same time as Chel. And stumbles again out of the sight of her.

"Y-You're..." He swallows. "Um, that's new."

The resplendent goddess before him smooths down her the deep pink skirt of her dress. "It was a gift," she demurs. "The chieftess hasn't fit into it since the first kid."

"It-It looks gorgeous on you."

"Thank you." She grins. "You're looking especially good yourself."

He sticks his chin up in pompous bravado, the same way they teased the unicorn. "Why, thank you."

After a minute of just staring at each other, Tulio gallantly offers his arm. Maybe that's some old etiquette lesson rearing its head. Maybe it's just a way to deflect tension. She beams and takes him up on his offer. They stroll down to dinner arm in arm.

Miguel awaits them in the main hall. His smile doesn't only light up the night - it sets it _on fire._

Tulio squeaks. "W-Where he'd even learn that?"

Chel discreetly jabs her elbow in his ribs. Only then does he realize Miguel's smolder is lifted from his own playbook.

First come the customary bows to Chief Tannabok and Chieftess Miya. Then Miguel receives them. He bows grandiosely, before taking Chel's free hand in his.

...And kisses it.

"Good evening, Chel." He graces them both with that stupid, sexy smile again. "You look fantastic."

"Thank you," she breathes, mortified and elated all at once.

Dammit. Tulio really shouldn't have used so many of his moves before the unicorn. Figures those are the memories he soaked up like a sponge.

Again Miguel bows. Tulio's mind goes white when Miguel's hand finds his. Whiskered skin caresses his knuckles. His kiss lingers to a touch too long, contains a little bit tongue. Miguel has never done this before. The bastard knows exactly what he's doing.

Their partner winks his way. "And you've never looked more dashing, Tulio."

"Same," he squeaks out like the idiot he is.

Miguel's smile brightens into a true, joyous grin. Chel's eyes stare daggers into Tulio's. They sit down with Miguel between them. They both serve as barriers between him and those bold enough to flirt tonight. They're both equally exposed to his presence.

Don't enable the unicorn, don't enable the unicorn, don't debauch the-

Tonight the servants pour them goblets of wine, dark and pure. Tulio downs his first cup to drown that train of thought dead. He's ready for ten more to drink himself into oblivion. From how Chel does the same he knows they're alike in this.

Miguel stares at his own goblet. He swirls the liquid around the brim, crinkles his nose at its sharp smell. Those first few weeks in Manoa he'd dined alone in his room, then at a table surrounded by kids. He's never had wine before, not even beer or pulque. His strongest drink must have been a sharp fruit juice.

Tulio allows himself a relieved smile. Alcohol is technically a poison. The first time the unicorn had smelled wine on him, he'd immediately healed him of his intoxication. Miguel still distrusting wine is a good thing. The last thing the idiot needs is a heady rush of confidence and even lower inhibitions. He barely has them as is!

"It's okay," Tulio tells him. "It's not really that-"

Miguel tries a deep sip. The potent taste jolts him back in his seat, wine splattering the table. His shocked expression soon curls up into a smile.

_Great._

"Pace yourself, partner," he murmurs instead. "Dinner's not even served yet."

With a haughty look, Miguel downs his goblet and sets it down. "I'll have another, thanks."

"It's gonna be a long night." Chel deftly plucks a grape, popping it into her mouth. Green eyes watch her. "A full stomach helps keep your head clearer." 

Miguel thanks the servant who refills his wine, but reaches for the fruit bowl over the goblet. "Is that how you and Tulio were able to spend the whole night out in bars, or were you doing other things too?" Tulio flushes beat red. Chel chokes on her grape. Their partner casually raises his voice for their dinner guests. "So, Chief Tanni, did the boys give you and Miya any trouble today?"

The presence of sane, stable adults at the table keeps conversation mercifully innocent over dinner. For the most part. Miguel is dropping a lot of innuendo about his fingers on the guitar and writing his heart onto the page. Half the time the idiot doesn't even realize he's doing it. When he actually means it, his tells are obvious. He waggles his brows, winks, smirks in a way that lets the whole damn palace know his interest. Wine and human hormones have both gone to his head.

"How goes your research, Tulio?" Chief Tannabok politely asks.

He plasters on a smile. "It's... It's coming along."

Conversation steers back to Miguel. At least he always has a thousand things to talk about. This days his topics revolve around more exploring the city and songwriting then squirrels and beech trees.

Not for the first time that night, Tulio mutters a spell and hopes for an 'accident' that will end this hell. Instead of exploding, the water pitcher diligently turns itself into a pitcher of wine. He buries his head in his hands.

Just when dinner seems to be winding down, the music starts up. Tulio instinctively snatches Chel's hand and whisks her to the dance floor. Miguel blinks after them. At a much more sedate pace, Tannabok leads his wife after them.

"The chief is _evil,"_ Tulio hisses in Chel's ear.

"Look at Miya," she mutters back. "This was all _her_ idea."

As they whirl around, Tulio catches the chieftess' eye on them. He bites back at the playful glint there.

Miya and Tannabok are fond of Miguel. He exudes just the right amount of charm, sincerity, and obliviousness to have all but gotten himself adopted. They know him only as a man, must be so pleased with themselves for encouraging his human desires. It's not like they know their good intentions will cause Miguel to lose himself and unwittingly _drive unicorns to extinction._

Tulio sneaks a glance at their partner. His eyes are glued to them, jaw slack in wonder. When was the last time he danced without his guitar in his hands? As a unicorn? Miguel is not only admiring their dance form. His gaze flickers from Chel's legs as they peak out from the skirt to the curve of Tulio's neckline. Of course they blush in embarrassment, and not anything else. Just like they only step up their dancing because the music kicks up. Tulio near bends Chel down to the floor, before spinning her away. Their audience of one is enraptured.

This is fine. As long as Miguel is content to look, then he won't be tempted to-

Red and gold flashes by. Suddenly without a partner, Tulio stands dumbly on the dance floor. With a grin Miguel wheels on with Chel. He stumbles only once before he falls into the rhythm.

Miguel is as graceful on two legs as four. That is the magic still at work, translating unicorn agility into spins, kicks, and side-steps. Only that's not entirely true. The unicorn had outshone all other dancers as the sun does the stars. Miguel is just clumsy enough in his form for Chel to follow along, to pick up her own ability so they meet in happy medium.

Tulio steals after them. He snatches Chel back like the thief he is. Not to be outdone, he steps up his own dancing. What he lacks in raw grace he more than makes up with style and panache.

With a joyous laugh, Miguel glides between them, and prances away with Chel. She grins wide as he does.

Tannabok and Miya quietly retreat from the dance floor as it becomes a battleground. Tulio and Miguel tear their ways back and forth across it. Chel whirls between them like a comet, black hair streaming. Where Miguel leaps for the ceiling, Tulio bends low and agile to the floor.

It should be a competition, a test of pride and skill, not that Tulio could ever hope to win against a unicorn. But this is a dance between three partners. Sometimes Tulio snags away Miguel when he aimed for Chel. She only skips after them to claim one in turn.

As the music swells to climax, Tulio's magic rises in a giddy tide. He spins away from his partners to instead burn his energy into his most passionate display yet, heated bravado and matador's flair. Chel and Miguel stand spellbound. At the edge of the dance floor he plucks a mundane flower and whirls back to them. They gasp in delight when he produces it from his sleeve by sleight of hand rather than sorcery.

Their hands both reach for the bloom. They both laugh in wonder as the petals unfurl as purple birds, and fly through the open windows into the night.

Tulio beams after them. He'd wanted butterflies. Songbirds were no less roman...

His thoughts screech to a halt. His partners lean against each other, sweaty and panting for breath. Chel has utterly forgotten her fear.

Miguel's green eyes are wide and wondrous. "T-That was-"

"Thirsty!" Tulio blurts out, dramatically fanning himself. "Who's thirsty? Boy, I sure am!"

He flees for the table. Chel, spurred by the sheer panic in his voice, is right behind him. She snatches a cup of water and goes to cool off by a window. Tulio falls into his chair. This time he dilutes his wine with water. Miguel, who plops down beside him, pours wine straight from the pitcher. Why should he know any different?

By the time Tulio remembers Miguel has no alcohol tolerance to speak of, the idiot has already guzzled at least three cups. Face red and beaming stupidly, he stumbles over to Tulio's side to drag him into another dance. And then trips into his lap.

"Oopsh," Miguel mumbles into his stomach. Then he blinks up at him. "Um, I meant t'do that. It'sh much comfier down here."

Tulio groans for the whole hall to hear. "I think you'll find your own bed even comfier, _Lord Miguel."_

He beams. "That'sh me!"

"Yes," Tannabok breaks in evenly. "It's high time we all turn in for the night, and find our own beds."

"Of course," Miya agrees sheepishly. "This night has rather... gotten away from all of us."

_You think, lady?_

"Don' be shilly!" Miguel laughs. "Night'sh not over 'til the cat creep comesh back!"

Chel sighs, coming over to their side. "Do you need help with him?"

Tulio staggers up with their partner's arm slug over his shoulder. "Nah, I got it. Go get some sleep. He's gonna be more of a nightmare tomorrow than he is tonight."

She stifles a laugh. "First hangover, huh?"

"I wanna hang over!"

Chel bites her lip. Tannabok and Miya have already bid their good nights and made a quick retreat. They're left alone with walking, slurring temptation. "Are you _sure_ you're okay with him?"

Tulio snorts. "Please, Chel. I'm way too sober for my own good and he's well... not."

"'M shober."

"No, Miguel, you really, really aren't."

"...'Kay."

Chel giggles in fond exasperation. "Good night, Miguel."

"G'night, Shel."

She lingers for one last, long look of them both, before fleeing down the hall. They both watch the swing of her hips. Miguel purrs after her. Tulio jolts at the sound, nearly dropping his burden.

"No, Miguel."

He whimpers like a puppy dog, eyes just as wide and round. A grown unicorn is too majestic to pull off adorable. Miguel is too cute for his own damn good. Tulio's knees turn to water.

 _"No,_ Miguel."

His partner slumps sullenly against him, and stops pawing after Chel. "Why not?"

Tulio weighs the merits of reminding Miguel of his current circumstances. Is he more likely to accept the truth he is a unicorn at heart, or blind to everything now but his own mortal wants. "Because you're drunk off your ass," he settles on. A beat. Eh. Miguel's too drunk to remember all this anyway. "Ask again when you're sober, you beautiful idiot."

"'Kay."

Miguel's hand stops trying to slide down his arm. Thank gods. They shamble off together.

"...Hey, Tulio?"

"Yeah?"

"Doesh 'Shel Dorado' rhyme with 'El Dorado?'"

Tulio bites back his laugh. "No, Miguel, they do not."

Miguel spends the rest of the slow, clumsy journey to his room stringing out lyrics aloud. He praises nimble fingers and raven hair, heavenly curves and eyes of midnight blue. Tulio loudly starts reciting old potion recipes in his head long drilled into him; the ones with the nastiest ingredients he can think of.

When they reach Miguel's room, he kicks the door open and dumps his partner onto the bed. Tulio doesn't trust himself to take off so much as a shoe. The man on the blankets is much too drunk to care. He lays contentedly sprawled out on his stomach, head hidden in his arms. Much like he had that first fateful dawn in the jungle, when the magic had forced trapped him in this skin.

Tulio's throat tightens as he recalls sunshine hair spilling down a nude, moon-pale back. Miguel's golden hair is sheared short now, his loose neck line revealing the supple skin beneath. He remembers a face devastating in its beauty, even when it had been horrified of its own body.

He remembers a dull voice that had told him his life had been better left to the Obsidian Jaguar. Guilt stabs through his gut.

"H-Hey, partner?"

"Hm?" Miguel mumbles into the mattress.

"Do you remember that... that first night?"

Green eyes peer up at him. "'Coursh I do. How could I 'ver forget?" Tulio's blood chills. Miguel raises his head to further reveal a fond, silly smile. "You promished to be my friend. We shook on it."

The magician swallows thickly, for that night had been in Dama Fortuna's carnival, and not before Manoa's gate. "You remember that?"

"Hm-hm. The bird, the barsh, the... the... Eck." He sticks his tongue out. "One horn, not... not..." His hand flies to his forehead. "Oh. Right."

"Chel and I made another promise to you, remember?" Tulio tries. He wrings his own hands. "I'm going to change you back. We're going to find all the other unicorns. We'll... We'll... We'll kill the gods damned cat creep, if that's what it takes."

"I remember the witch," Miguel whispers. "I'm... I'm not fake... I-I'm _real..._ I'm..."

His face burns with fierce determination when it flops back down into the covers. His declaration is heard only by the mattress.

"I know, partner," Tulio murmurs, unable not to ghost a hand through golden hair. The tension drains from Miguel's shoulders. "You're real. You've always been real. But you're also very tired and very, very drunk. What you have to say can wait for another day."

"T-Then Shel..."

"She feels the same way. Of course she does. We're _partners."_

"Partners. I - I - l l-" He yawns, then rubs at his eyes. "No. Need Shel for that."

"Good _night,_ Miguel."

"...G'night."

He's asleep before his head hits the bed. Tulio shakes his head and nudges a pillow under him. Miguel's hands snatch after him. He deftly shoves another a pillow into his arms. With a soft sigh, he rolls over, clinging to the pillow instead.

Tulio retreats to his own room, and tries not to envy an inanimate object.

* * *

While Tulio drags their intoxicated partner off to bed, Chel seeks out a shrine.

Manoa was a pious city long before the Jaguar God prowled their borders every night. In the Age of the Jaguar, they are especially mindful. Keeping the other gods in their prayers, and their altars full, prevents them also seeking direct influence in the world. They are called upon for good fortune and good hunting, but most especially so the Jaguar God never catches them after dark, and that Tzekel-Kan will never slit their throats upon his altar.

Chel herself has never been the most faithful follower; not after the bitter tragedies her grandparents had suffered as a child, her mother shoving herself forward as tribute so Tzekel-Kan would not take her, her father being mauled by an ordinary jaguar. After her brother Xaya had tried and failed to run for his life, only to be brutally executed by the high priest, she had thought her faith dead with him.

Now Chel alone keeps faith. Somebody has to. Tulio remains driven by only his festering guilt, the horrible depression that had engulfed their partner during his first few weeks of humanity. Miguel increasingly forgets the quest that drove him from his forest. He forgets who he still truly is.

So she seeks out Lord Bibi's shrine in a quiet garden corner. The Armadillo God is a trickster, patron and protector of humanity. His ingenuity helped mankind survive the numerous disasters the other gods used to try wiping them out. Quick thinking has kept Chel alive this long. If she's ever to going to receive divine inspiration on this fruitless quest, it will be from him. 

As she kneels before the altar, a brown snout pokes out from a bush. Lord Bibi is amendable to prayers tonight. Chel quietly lays out her fruits out, even a gourd of wine, and retreats to let the messenger have his fill.

The armadillo hops up onto the altar, sniffing at his god's tribute. "It has been quite some time since you came to our god," he notes casually.

Chel is not surprised in the slightest by a talking armadillo. She is partners with a unicorn and a magician. A physical god terrorizes their city every night. "Forgive me," she murmurs. "It has never been easy to keep my faith."

"Of course you are forgiven, child," the armadillo scoffs. "Lord Bibi always appreciates a fellow mischief maker." He takes an apple into his paws, munching into it. "And what mischief you have made. Even now, your unicorn is very beautiful."

"To me," she whispers. "To Tulio. But he... he isn't who he used to be."

The armadillo tears his way through the fruit. Just when she thinks the miracle done, he speaks once more. "You have very little time. Soon he will no longer remember who he is, or why he came to this place, and the Jaguar God will stop his hunt forever." 

Chel knots her fists into her skirt. "Tulio and I bring him back every time he slips. We're... always there for him."

"That may be," allows the armadillo. "It may even be he will never forget _you two._ Yet, no matter how he feels for you, that is conquered by his fear of the Jaguar God, of himself. And so he shall twist his heart until he can no longer see himself. He shall smile at your silliness that he is a unicorn, never abandon you through your heated insistence otherwise. You two may have him as a man, but never as all he is."

"No," Chel declares. "That won't be. Tulio and I shook on it. He is the last."

The armadillo sniffs up at her. "Then you must do what you came to do. He must take the high priest's way down to the Jaguar God."

Chel shoves fear aside to seize the armadillo in her hands. He blinks back at her. "Do you know the way?" she demands. "Tell me the way, what we must do."

The messenger flicks his ears in consternation. When she apologizes and gingerly puts him down, he rises up to his full height upon the altar. "When the wine drinks itself, when the skull speaks, when the jaguar gives way, only then will you find the tunnel down to where Tzekel-Kan has tethered his god to reality." He picks up the goblet in his paws. "There's a trick to it, of course."

She smiles bitterly. "Of course there is. Lord Bibi is the Trickster God."

The armadillo cackles, downing his libation. "That he is."

Chel doesn't have a clue about the wine or making the Jaguar God give way to his own lair, but at least she knows where to go next. Upon the death of Balam Qoxtok's old priest, his own mentor, Tzekel-Kan had mounted her skull into the base of their god's altar. He proclaimed it a great honor to her memory - it's an open secret he did it for petty spite. Maybe it even has something to do with why Tzekel-Kan has reigned as high priest since the time of Chel's grandparents.

"Please," she murmurs. "What became of the unicorns? Does... Does he still have a people to save?"

The armadillo sniffs at the bottom of the wine cup. "Near and far, near and far." His tail twitches. "They are within sight of your partner's eyes, but almost out of reach of his memory. They are coming closer, and they are going away."

About as straight an answer as one will ever get from even a messenger of divinity.

She rises to her feet. "Thanks away."

The armadillo grins, darts into the bushes, and vanishes without a rustle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In yet more shout outs to the original movie, Miguel trashes his drafts of 'Man's Road' - written as he dealt with lingering loneliness after all those long weeks traveling by himself, and his initial hopelessness in his humanity. And, some time later, 'Now That I'm A Man' - as his memory really starts slipping away from him, but he still wants to consciously acknowledge he and the unicorn were the same being. 
> 
> In the original book, Molly Grue is helped by a cat, but just as cryptically arrogant as you'd expect a talking cat to be. Bibi the Armadillo God is yet another character from my 'golden gods verse,' a trickster and protector of humanity. He's helpfully cryptic, but he trusts Chel to figure it all out ; )


	17. The Sleepwalker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some answers are more forthcoming than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The muse is strong with me tonight.

Miguel sits surrounded by a blizzard of crumpled papers, splattered in ink like the quill beat him up. It might as well have. He's ready to throttle his guitar. Not even the song will come, let alone the words. He knows the words matter far more than the melody. The right words are why he's here today. If he'd been named anything other than Miguel... if... if... anything else had changed, then he might not be himself. These words need to be true as his feelings.

Unable to take it, Miguel pushes his chair back. He takes great care to stomp over his failed drafts on the way out to his balcony. Outside, he inhales the salty air and lets the breeze caress his face. He leans over his rail to watch the waves. They reel by constant as the constellations. Above seagulls whirl. The only sounds are the sigh of the sea and their raucous laughter. Miguel seeks peace in their constancy.

He lifts a hand to the mark on his forehead. It still refuses to entirely fade.

"Tzekel-Kan," he murmurs, certain as the sunrise.

Though there is no sound, Miguel turns to face the high priest that looms omnipresent as a shadow. Tzekel-Kan smirks widely back at him. His eyes are sharp as obsidian.

"You are quick for what you are," the priest purrs, "but slow for what you were. I will catch you if you love much more."

Miguel freezes. Then he laughs, loud and frantic. "W-Who ever said anything about love? I certainly didn't."

Tzekel-Kan conspiratorially sidles in beside him. "Love dies, you know. You can stamp it out like a fire, or let it burn out on its own. I might be young by your standards, but I have already watched lives built up and topped like sandcastles. I have only known one power in this world that will never fade." He laughs. "Your pet magician will never truly know it. The curse over him can be plucked apart like a spiderweb."

Beneath them the earth heaves as the Obsidian Jaguar shifts his weight. Miguel clings to the rail. "Rest assured, Tzekel-Kan, my partners and I want absolutely nothing to do with your... god. We have no wish to conquer this kingdom or any other."

The high priest sneers. "Do not play the simpleton with me, _my lord._ We both know what you have come for, what you have pretend to have forgotten. I know what you are and what you are not."

Miguel flinches back from a gaze that stabs straight through his soul. "I-I don't know what you mean."

 _"Of course_ you don't." Tzekel-Kan looks him over. "Tell me, were you dying your hair at the beginning to keep up your ruse, or were you simply an aberration beforehand?"

His fingers tighten around the railing. "I'm far from the only blond in existence."

The priest prowls to his other side. "Oh, the young were radiant beyond even their parents. They shimmered silver and gold. I suppose you never truly outgrew that." He hums. "That's how you must've escaped the eyes of my god. You were young enough to preen over your pool all day, inexperienced enough to let your magician make you into this... this _mockery_ of what you are." A pause. "No. It couldn't have been him, could it? He was just the _vessel_ for that power."

Miguel snorts and turns away. "You're welcome to believe whatever you want. Now get out of my room."

Tzekel-Kan cuts him off. He smiles like a child. "I know you. I knew you the moment you came before me, even in this wretched shape. How you moved, turned your head, stood so perfectly still. I wondered over you, and the mockery your magician made of you. And now it's time to see." He slides an icy arm over Miguel's shoulder, guiding him back to the rail. "The tide is turning. Come here and behold what haunts your dreams."

Miguel gazes down. Under a dark, ominous sky, the waves are creeping in. They charged across the sands like stampeding animals, flinched back as if frightened of the land. Reflected by overcast clouds, they shine dull gray and green. When the waves break, they are the same shimmering white as his mother.

"There!" Tzekel-Kan stabs a finger downward, laughing like a child. "There they are. There they are! Claim again that they are not your people, lie that you did not come here searching for them. Claim that is only _love_ that kept your partners shackled to you."

Miguel's stomach churns like the sea below. He fumbles for the words.

"They are mine," Tzekel-Kan croons, "for they are my god's. The Lord of Conquest does not deign destroy them. He gathered them, one at a time, to drive them into the sea. What other cage could hold them? The Jaguar God watches over them when he wakes and when he sleeps. Now they are the water's. Every tide draws them in here, so that he may gloat over them. None ever dare the share. He broke their spirits long ago."

Miguel suddenly remembers a nightmare; a snarling darkness behind him, one that had chased him like a cat does a mouse. In that dream he had run on four cloven hooves. His sweaty fingers cling to the rail. They're proof that dream was a dream.

"I was still an acolyte when I went into the jungle with only my faith," Tzekel-Kan sighs. "My mentor was old and not bold enough to bring the world into the new age. But I was brave, and ventured forth into the night to seek my god. Instead I saw _them."_ His voice quivers in love and loathing. "The first time I saw them in that dawn, I thought I would die. One was drinking from a stream, another rested its head on their back. I saw them, and knew the one power that could challenge Balam Qoxtok. So I prayed for him to destroy them all." He laughs. "Instead he decided to keep them all for himself. And so did I also become his, for no other speaker makes his will so clear to the people."

Miguel stares down into the sea as if it might have the answer to all this madness. He sniffs. "I see only water."

"Do you still deny them, _Lord Miguel?_ Do you deny yourself?" Tzekel-Kan snarls. "Have you become that _human_?"

That one word near sunders him. How could he be anything _but_ human? _(How could he have fallen so far?)_

Tzekel-Kan sneers. "I suppose that must be it. Your eyes are shallow, stupid as any that never saw a unicorn. Not even your fake magician and your whore are so empty."

Miguel trembles in fear and fury. "I see nothing except a madman that terrorizes his own people simply because he can, and thinks himself the master rather than the pet." He draws himself up to his full height, hand flung disdainfully outward. "Now. Get. Out."

The high priest leers back in a mocking bow. "As you command, _Lord Miguel."_

Unblinking green eyes watch him slip back into shadow. Only then does he wrench his eyes shut and turn back to the sea. His eyes shut more in than they keep out. A nightmare with sickly eyes flashes before him, a butterfly shivers in the coming night. The Obsidian Jaguar descends relentless as night. His cry of terror cuts off as Tulio's magic twists him from the inside out, shaping him into something... other.

An eternity later, a gentle voice breaks through the storm. "Easy, partner, easy. It's over, it's over."

Warm, steady hands fall over his shoulders. Miguel takes a shuddering breath. "H-How much of that did you hear?"

"Enough, partner," Tulio soothes. "I caught enough."

Miguel slumps in relief and listens to his partner ramble on.

"In the sea," Tulio splutters. "They were literally staring us in the face this whole damned time! Please don't feel bad about it. I didn't see them because I'm an idiot, but even _Chel_ never knew, even after all those times we watched the tide come in with you!" He barks a laugh. "The cat creep made this whole city feel off. It's not enough to already see - you need to _believe_ they're there, with all your heart. Kinda... Kinda like we believe in you." Gently, Tulio laughs again. "All right, we'll find them now. Come on. Come with me."

Miguel finally opens his eyes and turns to face him. Before he can speak, Tulio's calloused hands find his cheeks. His partner studies his face with wide blue eyes. When Miguel finally thinks to reach after Tulio's hands, he snatches them away. He shakily wipes the wetness against his vest.

"Your face is wet," Tulio breathes. "It... It's just spray. If you've become human enough to cry, then no magic in the world... Oh, it must be spray. Please, _please_ be spray."

Tulio takes his hand and drags him onward. They wade right through Miguel's failed drafts. If his partner only looked down, the truth would be clear as day.

But he doesn't. His mind is a thousand miles away.

Chel is right outside their door. She squeezes them both in hugs. Miguel is too lost in thought to return it. The sheer heat of their closeness is muffled like he's deep underwater.

His partners plot and scheme and argue. Miguel lets himself be dragged along like a sleepwalker, though he has no idea where they're taking him. So long as they're together, he'll follow them to the end of the earth.

He hunts for the right words, the words that can make them... Well, Miguel needs to find those words first, before Tzekel-Kan or his god can steal them from him.

He's almost out of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For pacing's sake, I'm dividing the new few bits up. 
> 
> King Haggard and the Red Bull's relationship is intriguing in its vagueness. I'm trying to do the same with Tzekel-Kan and the Jaguar God here. King Haggard is a... very compelling villain to me. Most (like Tzekel-Kan) are walking avatars of wrath and arrogance. King Haggard is depression - he collects unicorns because they're the only things that have ever made him happy.


	18. The Riddle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our idiots con a dead lady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter tonight, I swear. This story wants to be finished already.

Night steals over the city, swallowing the golden temples and casting all into jagged shadow. Not that Chel sees sunset. Or even hears the Obsidian God storm out into the darkness. She's dragged her partners down into the narrow passages that cross under most of Manoa. Such hallways are for acolytes to travel between temples and prepare sacrifices without obstructing sacred streets and crowded festivals up above. As a former servant to the gods, a would-be sacrifice, Chel knows them well.

In her panic, she's forgotten to bring a torch. "Tulio, can you please make us a light?"

He mutters something curt and professional. A pale blue lightness spreads across the tunnels, then scatters into a thousand scurrying shards. Electric green mice skitter in the corners. Cerulean spiders hang down from glowing webs. Chel presses closer to her partners. After a moment, Miguel squeezes her hand back. She hadn't even realized she was holding it.

"I'm sorry I asked. Can you please turn them off again?"

"Sorry," he sighs. "Can't do it. If I had that much control over my magic we wouldn't be in this mess, would we?"

For a moment, Miguel rises from his stupor. In the sickly light his smile flashes blue. "I... I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

His attempt to start up the usual banter falls flat. Chel's too queasy and heartsick. Tulio only manages a grimace. Their partner's momentary joy lapses back into ponderous silence. Surely he must be remembering his past. With the unicorns so close the truth must be pounding its hooves against his brain.

They silently climb up the back entrance into Balam Qoxtok's temple. Fortunately Tulio's creepy spell hasn't extended this far. Green flames gutter low in the braziers around the main chamber. The god's massive jade idol dominates the space. Before its paws is the altar Xaya bled his life out over. Embedded into its base as a yellowed skull. Its eye sockets reflect only darkness.

"I'm half-surprised the creep isn't up waiting for us," Tulio mutters.

Chel smiles darkly. "He's still human enough to sleep. And no predator expects dinner to walk straight into its den and practically beg to get eaten."

"Thank you for that lovely mental image." Tulio grimaces up at the idol that looks ready to spring to life at any moment, then glances uncertainly down at its former high priestess. "Does... Does she have a name?"

"One lost to time." She curls a fist, for her other hand is still entwined with Miguel's. "Our speaker doesn't like the memories of his enemies living on. Aside from the royal family, who all have fortunately happened to be sane, his own teacher was his first and greatest rival."

Tulio cracks his knuckles and warns them to stay back. Chel does just that while Miguel stands placidly by. Their partner strides forward. He places one hand upon that yellowed crown and commands the skull to wake. His words echo with power. The skull stays silent. His next spell is polite and cajoling. Nothing. Every spell after that is a little more frazzled, a little more pleading.

Chel studies the skull. Though its expression never changes, the shadows flickering across its surface grant dimension. The shadows in those sockets are almost amuse, its perpetual grin almost a smirk. She's been aware this entire time.

Just as the magician's last spell breaks off into a frustrated snarl, Chel raises her own voice. "She's mocking you, Tulio."

"That's right," rasps the skull as Tulio's shout cuts off. "Yell louder and wake my bratty apprentice. Go right ahead. He sleeps not far from here. He'll look forward to dousing me in yours lifesblood."

Chel glowers at it. Miguel takes a curious step forward. Tulio crosses his arms.

The skull chatters her teeth at them. "Well, did you come to gawk at me or ask the way down to Balam Qoxtok? I am supposed to be an eternal guardian. Not even the chief himself knows the secrets I keep."

Chel crosses her arms. "Isn't this the part where you sic a hundred loyal warriors on us?"

"Yeah." Tulio's eyes narrow. "What's your angle here?"

"My angle for the last gods know how many years is having to stare at every poor moron that dies bleeding on the altar above me," the skull answers crossly. "I was once high priestess here, you know. My eternal reward was to be mounted as decoration and serve the sniveling snake I trained. Excuse me for not being loyal to the man who ever prevented me from finding true death."

"All right," Chel concedes. "Will you tell us the way down to the Jaguar?"

"No." The skull cackles in delight.

Tulio splutters indignantly. "Don't you have better things to do with eternity than torment innocent thieves?"

"Nope," she rasps. "I have all the time in the world. Ask me tomorrow. Let's see how long I can milk this."

Tulio clenches his fist, ready to punch the skull. Her grin leers right back.

"I don't suppose a little tribute would make you amendable to our prayers, would it?" Chel offers sweetly. Her eyes flick to a perplexed Miguel. "We are on a rather tight deadline tonight."

Eye sockets deep and dark stare back at her. "One thing my apprentice does do is shower me in blood."

Chel lets go of Miguel's hand and strides forward. From a pocket in Tulio's shabby robe she pulls out a wine gourd stolen from the royal stores. She sloshes it invitingly. "Yes," she demurs. "Blood devoted to the Jaguar God. When's the last time anyone showed you proper appreciation? When's the last time you enjoyed a nice, refreshing drink?"

"Please," the skull sneers a moment too late. "I don't have a stomach, let alone a tongue or palate. That gourd might as well be filled with air. Not like I have lungs either."

"True." Chel squints down at the gourd. "And I have no idea how we get the wine to drink itself."

"Eh." Tulio shrugs and takes it from her. "If the skull doesn't want it, it's useless to us."

He uncorks it and lets rich red spill upon the floor. Chel snaps a hand over Miguel's mouth before his question can jeopardize it all.

"S-Stop!" the skull cries. "What are you doing?"

"Please." Tulio takes a large, theatrical slip. "There's still plenty left over. It's not even that good a wine. Flat, almost no flavor whatsoever. What do you think, Chel?"

Before the skull's agonized sockets, Chel takes the gourd and raises it to her mouth. Not a single drop remains. She smacks dry lips against a dry tongue. "It's fine, I guess. No harm done if we throw the rest away."

As she raises her arm, the skull clacks so wildly she nearly flies out of her alcove. "Hey, stop! Stop that!" she wails. "You idiots must be crazy, throwing away good wine like that! Give it to me if you want it, but don't throw it away?"

Tulio smirks. "But how would you appreciate it? You said so itself it means nothing for you."

"It means _everything_ to me." The skull's struggles send a crack down her head. "Gods know how many years dead, but I remember wine, and far more beside. Give me a swallow, just a sip, and I'll know the taste better than you puny mortals ever will. All your flesh and saliva only get in the way of its true essence."

She smiles reasonably. "If you remember the entrance to the Obsidian Jaguar's lair as well as you remember wine, we might be able to come to an agreement."

"B-But it isn't even - _hmph."_

Tulio slaps a hand over Miguel's protest. "So," he drawls, "what will it be?"

"Done!" cries the skull. "Just give it to me now! I am more thirsty now than when I ever had a throat!"

She grinds her teeth so violently some shake lose and clatter to the ground. Miguel pulls a face. Chel nearly pities her enough to give in.

"You'll get it all," Tulio grinds out, "once you tell us how to find the Jaguar."

The skull whimpers. "Through the idol," she spits out. "Simply step onto the altar, through the idol, and there you are. Now give me my wine!"

Chel considers a solid jade carving. "You mean there's a door in the idol?"

Tulio cocks his head. "Or maybe under the altar?"

Eye sockets burn into them. "No, you ingrates! The idol _is_ the doorway. Now, gimme!"

"But-"

"When I was alive, I thought things rigid as you do. We brick ourselves up in years and hours we think solid as our gods. The Jaguar God is simply a face for war and conquest, an attempt to personify the dark. He is real enough to stalk these streets every night, to mash up whole armies between his teeth. If his idol is solid stone, then of course it is also thin as fog. Here I am, prattling away long after that bastard apprentice put my own knife through ribs I no longer have." The skull sighs. "Had I thought then as I do now, I could have walked through walls." 

Tulio nods. "Yes. That's how the real magicians do it."

Chel sighs at the obvious. "You need to have _faith_."

"Of course that's all there to it, fool girl!" snaps the skull. "Now give me my wine!" Chel tips the empty gourd between her cracked teeth. She gurgles and sighs. "Ah. Now that's the good stuff, rich as what we used to give sacrifices back in the good old days." For a moment, she dips into silence. "Since you were so amiable, I'll give you one last bit of friendly advice. Smash me now, and don't ask questions."

Tulio balks. "A-Are you-"

That's when her eye sockets fixate on Miguel. They flash wide and bright, though she has no eyes left to speak of. "Oh, no," she rasps. "I'm disloyal, but not treacherous. Unicorn! Unicorn! Tzekel-"

Chel rips the skull out by the sockets and hurls it against the stone floor. Even as it shatters, it's already too late. Tzekel-Kan's curse splits the air. The cool darkness gives way to searing green magic.

"Go!" Tulio shouts, throwing his way between them. "I'll be right behind you!"

"N-No," Miguel creaks out as he finds some badly-timed courage. "We're staying right-"

Chel grabs his wrist and bolts for it. "Come on!"

He's stunned enough to follow. They stumble over stone steps and bone shards. As the air behind them erupts into blue and green lightning, Chel scrambles atop the altar upon which her big brother died, and hurls herself at the Jaguar God's idol. Miguel follows her step for step. He promised to do so to the ends of the earth.

Together they tumble into a green haze, thick and choking. From all around flare great bolts of light. Tzekel-Kan's growled curses echo beside Tulio's dirtiest insults.

Chel stands dumbly in the middle of that fog. Miguel squeezes her hand, and calmly leads her on. Ahead the haze pales. Behind them the orders Tzekel-Kan bellows to his warriors fade away into echoes. When his words are only memory they stop at the border between one world and next. They turn back for their partner, and wait.

And wait.

"T-Tulio," she blurts out, tears streaming freely down her cheeks. Miguel looks at them in wonder. "Where is he? I - We..."

A familiar shape staggers through the mist, hunched over as if fighting a strong wind. Blood drips from his temple, past his badly singed eyebrows. "I'm all right. A little fried, but it's not like I was in any real danger to-"

Chel tackles him. They fall together upon the hazy ground. She smooshes his cheeks between her hands. "Nice going, partner." She silences his protests with a kiss. "Never, ever do that to us again."

"Not ever planning on doing so."

Tulio's grin falters as they turn to Miguel. Their partner kneels down by their side. He clasps Chel's hand, tenderly strokes his other against Tulio's hairline. When he opens his mouth to speak, the shimmering haze around them suddenly gutters out. They fall into black silence.

In the dark, Miguel's voice tremulously speaks up. "W-What was that?"

"Tzekel-Kan destroyed his own doorway," Tulio sighs. "Now there's no way back, and no way out but the Jaguar's way."

Between them, Miguel trembles in his mortal skin. His hold on Chel's hand becomes a death grip.

Gently, relentlessly, they pull him into the dark.


	19. The Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Miguel finally spits it out, and starts a chain reaction at the worst possible time. At least one partner knows how to keep her head when the monstrous incarnation of war and conquest is about to bear down upon them.

The darkness presses in on all sides. The walls are something like icy obsidian, stealing the warmth from their skin and slicing open their clothes when they accidentally slip against it. Their path is wide enough to walk hand in hand. They huddle together, shoulders touching. Miguel has wound up between Chel and Tulio; he refuses to let them go, they refuse to let him drift behind.

In the beginning, Miguel's moon-pale skin had illuminated the dark as if his horn had still stone within. Now he's dull as his partners. There is no true light down here, only gradations in the blackness. The path yawning ahead swallows up the walls, the floor, the jagged ceiling. Their surroundings seem real enough. They shiver in the damp air, never quite grow used to the dank odor of rotten meat, and trip over stones. Yet their path twists and turns, rising here and dropping there, stretching on and doubling back on itself. Tulio walks a dream. So long as he shares it with his partners, it's real to him.

For an eternity they travel in silence. There is no sound of claws on stone, no blazing green eyes. The Jaguar's odor lingers in every corner. It seeps into Tulio's robe, his hair. He fears he might never scrub it off.

"The sea," Chel breathes into the quiet. "The Jaguar drove all the unicorns into the sea?"

"All thanks to his psycho priest pointing them out to him," Tulio mutters. "His god would have never known them otherwise."

"No." Her voice drips with bitterness. "How could a starless night ever know the warmth of the sun? Or conquest know contentment?"

Their gazes turn to their partner. Tulio's mistake forced mortality upon an eternal being; they've dragged a unicorn down to human despairs and exalted him to planes far higher. Miguel stares stubbornly ahead and refuses to even hear their words. He can't believe this all a dream, can he?

"All my life." Chel shakes her head. "I've been seeing unicorns all my life. They're terrified by the same thing that drove me from all I ever knew."

Tulio can't help his humorless laugh. "That's true magic for you, hidden in plain sight the whole time."

Miguel stops dead in his tracks. They gently try to tug him on. They might as well uproot a tree. "I won't go any further."

"Are you nuts?" Tulio yelps. "We're in the monster's lair, Miguel! The only reason we stop here is if he eats us!"

Chel nudges his shoulder. "We don't have a choice. We can only go on. And so we will go on."

"All of us?"

Tulio's heart shudders at that fragile tone. He clenches his hand around Miguel's. "Of course. You, me, and Chel. We're... We're partners."

Miguel laughs. It is not joyous. The sound is harsh, triumphant. "Then you can't change me." Miguel rips his hand away from Tulio's, turning to Chel. "Don't let him work his magic on me. The Jaguar has no real care for humans - we can walk right past him just as we are. It's the unicorn he wants. D-Don't let him change me into a unicorn."

Once a new-made man had spoken in those same hysteric tones at being trapped in a mortal body. He had declared that body dying all around him, had begged Tulio to change him back. Now, months later, he dreads his own immortality, the courage to fight dragons and the strength to drive back death. Tulio giggles at the absurdity of it all.

"Sure," he croaks out. "Why not? We can sneak under the Jaguar's nose like mice once more time." Tulio swallows thickly. "If we do, your people will never have another chance. All unicorns on the whole damned world will remain his prisoners forever, except you, and you will die. Y-You'll grow old and die."

"Everything dies." Green eyes spear him. "I kept my wood eternally green. My creatures never feared hunters, never wanted for food or shelter. I-I could never learn their names, or even have a favorite. They sprung up and died around me like dandelions." His face crumbles. "And now it's my chance. I want to die with you, _both_ of you. I am no unicorn. I am human, I am real, and I... I love you."

Oh.

_Oh._

Tulio's rebuttal fizzles out. His jaw drops as Miguel closes the gap between himself and Chel, gracelessly mashes their faces together. She weeps too much to fight him.

"W-W-What? Y-You can't-"

Miguel seizes him by the shoulders. Their first kiss is artless and bursting with truth. Tulio goes limp against him. Are the tears streaming down his cheeks his own, or Miguel's?

Slowly, Tulio winds an arm around him. The other quietly pulls Chel in close. His heart is not content until both are cradled against his chest. A shaky laugh escapes him. "And here I thought I was just exploding with lust for you two. Turns out I'm too screwed up to remember what love feels like."

Chel makes a sound somewhere between sob and exasperated sigh as she nestles against them both. "You two can be such idiots, you know that? And I'm an idiot for not realizing a lot quicker just how much I love you back."

With a ragged sigh, Miguel wrenches away from them both. The divide between them yawns deep and dark.

"No," he whispers. " _No._ It doesn't matter how much you love me back. If you change me, you will lose me. I... I can't love you as a unicorn, not anymore than I'll be able to love the guitar, or Manoa, or Miya and Chief Tanni. You'll be like the rabbits in my wood, there and gone in the blink of an eye. I will be more beautiful than anything in the world, and live forever, and never be able to regret all you took from me."

"Miguel, I-"

Their partner shies away at the mere sound of his voice. Tulio's throat tightens. Green eyes desperately lock on Chel. "I won't be _Miguel_ if he changes me back. Unicorns have no names, remember? No ties to your world." His words fray like an unraveling thread. "If... If a single drop of me remains in that unicorn, you will know it. I will let the Jaguar drive me into the sea with the others. Then at least I can be near you."

"Please, _Miguel,_ don't be so melodramatic." Tulio's voice is light and spiteful. Though they never move, the tunnel around them darkens. It's either the terrible mood or the melodrama luring the Jaguar God closer. "I certainly can't change you back now. Hermes Trismegistus himself couldn't turn a human being into a unicorn, and you're truly human to the bone now. You can love, and fear, and overreact. So there goes my chance at mortality. Gods know I can't undo it now. Let it all end here. Go run off and be happy with Chel. Grow old and die while unicorns wither away in the sea. Be my greatest failure - _because now I'm never free to d-_ Ouch!"

A hand sharply slaps him in the back of the head. Miguel yelps as Chel does the same to him. Her hands twist their ears like scolding children as she brings them in close.

"Gods help me, because I'm in love with the two thickest men on the planet." Chel's gaze snaps to him. "If the greatest magician ever couldn't make a man into a unicorn, then do you suppose our next quest could be helping you find magic a bit more achievable?"

Tulio ponders all the time wasted tearing his hair out over unicorns and cat creeps. His two greatest acts of magic ever had been worked during adventures. "...Maybe."

Chel lets him go. Miguel is still at her mercy. "And you, what did I tell you that morning when you laid down and said you'd die there?"

He slouches. "That I wouldn't."

"Exactly." Dark eyes soften. "What did you say right after that?"

He sheepishly clears his throat. "Something about... about this body dying all around me. I asked how humans bare it."

"Because we've never known anything else," she echoes. She releases her grip on his ear to take his hand. "And because we have to. Just like we have to face the Obsidian Jaguar, and free the unicorns."

"W-Why do we have to do that?"

Tulio grins without humor. "Because the only thing more human than running away from our problems is trying to kill them."

Chel takes his hand too. "You love this city too, don't you, Miguel? It wouldn't be very human of you to leave the Obsidian Jaguar and to terrorize the streets every night. You don't want Miya and Tannabok to fear Tzekel-Kan anymore, or to let their boys grow up under him like I had to."

His shoulders square. "No more sacrifices," he whispers. "Not now, not ever."

"And?"

Miguel swallows, human selfishness warring against human conscience. "And maybe... I'd be a terrible son to leave my mother stranded in the sea? That I'd be even worse than Tzekel-Kan to ignore so many innocent souls like that?"

"Then on we go."

Chel tugs them unerringly forward. Around them the utter dark begins to give way to sickly green light. Steadily, the brightness rises until they are thrown into stark shadow. Tulio sees his partners clearly now, sallow and strange. Under that light even Miguel's vitality is drained away, until he looks more mortal than his partners. Chel grins through her terror, brilliant and terrible.

"Balam Qoxtok is coming," she announces in savage eagerness.

Though he follows, Miguel's eyes roll like a frightened horse's. Tulio's heart aches for him.

 _Leave him be,_ Tulio prays to any power listening. Manoa is allegedly brimming with far more gods than the one that devours whole armies. _I've done enough to him. Please, please don't make me do it again._

The eldritch light and deathly odor swell into a nauseating cloud. The path tilts downwards, into the burning heart of that hellish cavern. They march along like human sacrifices to the altar.

Until Miguel staggers. Tulio catches him before he crashes to the unforgiving ground.

"Miguel!"

"T-Tulio?" Green eyes blink feverishly up at him. "I don't feel so good. I think I may need to sit down a... a..."

Tulio swings him into his arms instead. "Not here, partner. Anywhere but here."

Over Miguel's head, his partners exchange somber looks, and continue on. Chel takes the lead into that terrible brightness.

"Can we do that?" Miguel mumbles into his chest.

"Do what?"

"Just sit down and be together, like how we used to be?" Miguel buries his head into his robe. "You and me and Chel, if she wants. Somewhere anywhere but here."

"Of course, partner," Tulio chokes out. "I'd love that. To sit down and talk about how crazy our lives are. M-Maybe... do some other things on the side. If you want to, that is! What do you say, Chel?"

Chel stops dead.

"M-Miguel?" Tulio forces down his fear best he can. "Miguel, you have to walk now."

Their partner stirs. "Hm?"

"H-He's here. He's here."

Miguel scrambles out of his hold, nails sinking into his arms.

Ahead the Jaguar God's baleful eyes loom over them.


	20. The Spell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which all is not yet lost.

The Jaguar God has not deigned to meet them in his den. No. He has stalked them up the passage, silent as a shadow. His head knocks stalagmites loose, his obsidian sides scrape the walls. When he stomps his paw, the earth shakes, and they all fall before his might. He looms over them with steaming jaws. His eyes sweep blindly over them, again and again. With great gushing breathes, his scents the air for his prey.

Slowly, Tulio staggers to his feet. He ignores the deity towering over him and turns his mind inward. He waits for his magic to stir, to speak through him. It shall either save his partners or damn them all.

Tulio hears no secret well of power whispering within. He shall work neither a miracle nor a folly. There is only gaping emptiness inside, echoing with his inadequacy. Hermes Trismegistus was wrong, he realizes with sickening horror. That magic was never his to use. It used him until he was all used up.

Trembling like a leaf, Miguel stands. He takes only a single step back from the Jaguar and regards him as he once had Celaeno. In turn Balam Qoxtok does the same. His claws gouge great scars into the earth. He cocks his head and lashes his tail into the wall. Miguel doesn't startle at the sound. At the moment the Obsidian Jaguar is one very big, very confused cat. He doesn't even snarl.

Without ever turning from the Jaguar God, Miguel reaches to find Chel's hand and tug her back. Tulio watches in dizzy, giddy disbelief.

Good. Very good! He's a powerless hack who couldn't do anything even if he wanted to. But apparently his last true spell has finished its purpose. Miguel is a man, dull and mundane, without even the sense to cower before war incarnate. Tulio almost believes the Jaguar God will simply let them slip under his belly. There is no unicorn here to toy with. The three idiots before him aren't even smart enough to scatter from his paws.

Then the Jaguar's bares his jagged fangs into a grin. He springs.

The Obsidian Jaguar could have killed them all that instant, gnashed them between his teeth. Instead he falls just slow enough to let them scatter for crevices in the tunnel walls. He thunders by when his claws could have pried them all from their hiding places. With feline grace, he turns in the narrow tunnel, and lowers into a crouch. Only then does he roar.

They flee. He follows; not swift enough to kill, but close enough to keep each alone and frantic in the dark. Around them the earth heaves and shakes. Over its rumble, the god's snarls, they cannot hear their own screams. Very faintly down the tunnel drifts the smell of the sea.

_He knows! He knows!_

Once Tulio fooled him, stuffed a unicorn into human skin, but never again. Man or unicorn, the Jaguar will have his final prize, and drive him into the sea with all the others. It doesn't even matter this one is mortal enough to drown. No trick of Tulio's will sway him now.

Ahead the tunnel suddenly widens into a massive cavern. They trip over yellowed bones and the rusted armor of conquistadors. Death hangs heavy in the Jaguar God's den, near heavy as the sickly sweetness of rotting flesh. Here is where Tulio shall serve as a toothpick. Between a god's hungry jaws, even Hermes Trismegistus' spell will finally fall short.

The chase is not yet over. The Obsidian Jaguar drives them down another tunnel. Beyond is the dim shine of the sea.

Miguel cries out. He falls like a sunflower breaks. His partners scream with him.

Tulio charges. The Jaguar God's careless bulk smashes him against the cavern wall. Fighting against broken limbs, the magician drags himself to his feet. Even as his jaw snaps back into place, he grits his teeth to do something, heaves air into his punctured lungs.

He should already be too late.

He isn't.

His own voice falls victim to the sudden stillness.

Miguel lays sprawled on his side, one leg twisted beneath him. Face white with pain and terror, he tries to stand. He fails. The Obsidian Jaguar towers over him, heaving like a bellows.

Between them stands Chel. Her legs are splayed, her only weapon the stone she has held in both hands. She returns the Jaguar's snarl with one of her own.

"No," she declares. "Not now, not ever."

She is as foolish as a little girl staring down a whole army. Still she stands.

Terror and love and great sorrow shake Tulio then. They coalesce in a terrible crescendo, brimming in every corner of his soul. Twice before a power like this had touched him and left him more barren then ever. Now it spills from his fingers, his eyes, his pores. It is too much to ever use, to ever hold. He weeps in loving agony. How empty he'd been, for Chel and Miguel to have made him so full.

No. They'd only had the clear eyes to see what had been inside him all along. Things far greater than magic.

Without moving, the Jaguar God stomps his paw. Chel falls flat on her face from the tremor. From her knees she hurls her rock. It strikes his stony chest. He bellows regardless, rising onto his hind-legs to slam his paws down. The whole world quakes. Once more Chel staggers up. She spits blood at war incarnate. Behind her, Miguel's cry is lost to a furious snarl.

Even now, Tulio's power will never match divinity like this. Not ever. There is only one way to save both his partners, one thing that enrages Balam Qoxtok more than a mortal that dares fights back.

Tulio strides fearlessly forward. This should be a gentle, joyous occasion. Instead the words spill desperately out of him. As he does his artificial immortality falls like a shroud, like a shell he's finally outgrown.

No more running. Not now, not ever. No matter how much this aches.

At the first word of his spell, Miguel lets out a horrible wail. His hand fumbles for Chel, still staring down their deaths. His terrified gaze instead falls on Tulio.

He chokes on the words, but utters them anyway. Like this one partner will be crushed like an insect. The other will be driven into the sea to drown, or be trampled himself when the Jaguar God realizes him too injured to be driven.

The unicorn blossoms silver, gold, and boundlessly beautiful. Tulio weeps as much for him as the ghost of the man that lingers a moment more.

Only then does Chel's resolve break. She turns to behold the unicorn, the fleeting glimpse of his human self. It is not the unicorn's name that slips past her lips.

For a moment that stretches on eternity, the unicorn stares at them out of lost, elsewhere eyes. He is even more beautiful than Tulio remembered; for not even a magician can keep a unicorn in his head for very long. Yet he is not what he had been; no more than Tulio is now. His beard is still trimmed down to his chin, his golden mane sheared short. Chel takes a single faltering step toward him. His eyes are not a unicorn's eyes. His horn remains dull as rain.

With a roar that cracks the cavern walls, the Obsidian Jaguar pounces. The unicorn flees into darkness.

Balam Qoxtok leaps over Chel. His lashing tail still catches her in the side. She falls dazedly to her feet. Tulio drags her to her feet, then after their partner. Though neither beast is ever in sight, the whole earth rumbles from their chase.

Suddenly it's sand they stumble into, a cold sea wind that slaps their faces. A few stars still twinkle in the heavy blue sky above. The tide is out, and the white beach curves on for eternity. The waves are just starting to tiptoe back in. In the distance are the peaks of Manoa's tallest temples. Of course the Jaguar God doesn't make his home at the heart of the city. Before his manifestation he'd been a border god, a god of the outer places. Among his own people he's more a stranger than ever.

Near the shoreline, the unicorn stands with his back to the sea. The Jaguar God creeps in slowly. The unicorn does not resist. His horn is dark, his head down, like that last hopeless dawn.

When his hoof actually touches the water, the unicorn leaps away. He skims so light over the sand the wind of his passing blows his own prints away. Balam Qoxtok thunders after him.

Chel squints good and hard at Tulio. "You're mortal now, aren't you?"

"Mortal as the day I was born," he answers hollowly.

Her nails sink sharply into his arm. Her eyes are wild. "Then you have power. Now do something, before I need to kill both of you."

"My magic gave back all it could." Tulio clenches his fists. What use is all the magic in the world if it cannot save a unicorn? "If he won't fight, then..."

A plot, brilliant and terrible, forms. Eh. He's long surpassed a normal lifespan anyway. There's better ways to go out saving the two souls he loves most in the world.

With one last kiss to stun Chel, Tulio wrenches himself free of her grip, and charges down the beach. His hand humbles for the heaviest thing in his stupid enchanted pockets. The unicorn gallops blindly past him.

"Goddammit, Miguel!" An elegant head whips his way. "We told you to one goddamned thing!"

Tulio flings a crystal ball left over from one very regrettable summer as a fortuneteller.

Before the Jaguar God tramples him dead, he leaves the world to the sweet sound of the bastard's pained yowl.

* * *

By the time Chel realized what that brave, reckless idiot had planned, Tulio's near reached his doom. All she can do is scream at the sight of her partner, limp and broken as a doll.

Her scream is the lost in the unicorn's. It is not a challenging bell, clear and pure. This is a harsh, squawking wail of sorrow and rage, one no immortal has ever gave. The earth heaves as the Jaguar God grinds to a halt. With Tulio's blood still staining his claws, he hesitates with an uncertain growl.

With another horrible cry, the unicorn rears up. His horn slashes like a scimitar. He leaps, and Balam Qoxtok swerves out of his way. Chel has seen his horn shine like starlight. Now it burns ten times brighter. He is not a serene star, but the sun in all its fiery vengeance.

Again the unicorn charges. Again the Obsidian Jaguar yields, foot by grudging foot. Only once does he lash out with a paw, and screech when the horn sears into his stony flesh. The unicorn stabs to kill. With catlike agility, Balam Qoxtok scrabbles to evade that spiteful horn. He falls back without further fight, until the unicorn stalks him to the water's edge. Now waves lap at his paws, though they try to skitter back.

The unicorn lowers his head for another try. The Jaguar God crouches as if to fight or flee.

Around them, the tide is coming in. Far out to sea unicorns arch out of the waves, hooves flailing against each other as they fight the instinctive flow to shore. They can neither flee back into the depths or roll in. Balam Qoxtok refuses to break, or to charge. The immortals are at an impasse. Theirs might be eternal.

One soul on that beach is no longer so patient. Chel's unicorn blazes forth.

Balam Qoxtok springs into the sea. His final snarl rises into a plaintive mewl for his mother. Unicorns flounder to let him pass. Their wake kicks up rainbow mist, shimmering in their breath and the glow of hundreds of horns.

When the Jaguar God's paws last leave the mortal coil, all the earth sighs in relief at his passing. For just a moment, his obsidian bulk is black against the sea, before he slips into depths far darker.

Unicorns surge out of the sea. Their brilliance turns the day to night. Chel can't care less for them. She stumbles across the sand to fling herself over Tulio's body. In their madness from freedom, to escape the prison that now holds their jailer, the unicorns should have trampled them both. Instead they part like waves breaking around stones. Their partner splays his hooves and angles his horn at the wild tide. He trumpets, again and again, until every last straggler vanishes into the jungle.

Not a single branch was broken in their stampede. All that remains of the flood are cloven hoof prints, quick to be swallowed by the tide.

Then it is only the three of them.

"You stayed," she whispers. "Oh, you stayed."

The unicorn says nothing. His blazing horn has all but guttered out.

Chel considers their partner, cradled brokenly in her arms. Tulio's dark blue eyes are already glazing over. She bites back a sob and tenderly closes them. Her hand lingers on his cheek, to soak up all the warmth that lingers there. They lay like that for awhile, the unicorn standing vigil.

Then a shimmering horn lowers itself into view. Chel's eye finds his.

Clumsily as a first kiss, the unicorn brushes the tip of his horn to Tulio's stubbly chin.

Eyes fluttering open, Tulio inhales a deep breath. Chel clamps back a scream as he sits up. "Hermes," he says wondrously, gaze very far away. "Hermes, I had the craziest dream." He laughs. "I dreamed that I was dead."

Their partner touches him a second time, over the heart. His horn lingers there. They all tremble, as Chel's fingers edge toward his mane.

"I remember," the unicorn breathes. "I remember you both."

"Hey, back there, I meant it-"

Tulio trails off, for the unicorn is already away. His hooves ghost over the sand, don't disturb so much as a single rock as he glides toward the jungle edge. Only then does he look back, dappled in shadows as the sun breaches the sea. Chel and Tulio call his name, the only one he has ever truly known, the one he made all his own. The unicorn flinches and vanishes into the undergrowth.

"Goddammit, Miguel!" Tulio shouts after him. "Innocent and wise my ass!"

Chel helps him stand. He's understandably a bit shaky on his legs. "He's going to try slinking back to his forest and mope all eternity, isn't he?"

"Sounds like Miguel." Tulio groans. "Too bad I never got the actual location of his forest out of him. Stupid directionally-challenged unicorns. But how hard will it be to look for him? We just have to find the forest with the mysterious voice that never stops singing angsty love songs."

Chel squeezes his hand. "It won't come to that."

He clutches desperately back. "H-How do you know that?"

"He owes us at least a proper goodbye." She sighs. "After he sulks a bit and once more tries to convince himself his feelings are no longer valid, because we also taught him distancing yourself from your actual emotions is a healthy thing to do."

Something they all can learn from. If they ever get the chance.

Hope and resignation war across Tulio's face. Then his eyes narrow. "What's your angle here?"

She hugs him twice as hard, as Miguel isn't currently here. "No angle, I promise. Just... closure."

At least no angle she's sure of, not yet. Tulio and Miguel both seem to be operating under the impression that spell restored the unicorn to his true form. That certainly might be the case.

Or maybe Tulio is a stronger magician than old Hermes Trismegistus after all, far underestimated what his own magic is capable of. A spell fueled by love and desperation must be very potent indeed, a prayer in its own right. Perhaps it is even power strong enough to shape a mortal man into a unicorn. A spell woven, and not _broken._ The implications of that are...

No. She needs to be sure before she can entertain that desperate, threadbare hope. Sure of the powers at work, sure of what Miguel truly wants for his future. That right is his alone.


	21. The Trails to Blaze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our intrepid lovers find far more than closure.

The morning the unicorns burst forth from the sea will always be remembered by those who lived it, though none will ever quite recall why. It is hard to keep one unicorn in a memory, let alone all of them. This is Manoa's first morning where the Obsidian Jaguar does not thunder back to his lair. It is the brightest dawn in memory, the day when even the most cynical souls wept to behold the rainbow mist streaming from the sea.

By the time morning truly begins, the unicorns of the world have put Manoa from their memory. They have galloped away from the briny sea and gone their separate ways. Most seek their old havens. Those who have lost them to mankind seek out new secret corners of the world to claim as their own, and make magical.

All unicorns except one.

The moment he slips into the jungle, one unicorn's hooves do not guide him back to his own wood, but to the ridge overlooking the city he once dwelt. Below Manoa's temples shine golden in the sunlight, and its canals shine crystal blue. The breeze carries song and celebration. His ears ache at the sound. Restlessly he paces the borders of the valley; unable to bring himself to leave, yet unable to venture any closer.

Never does he let a human glimpse him. He dreads to again be mistaken for a dumb beast or, worse, at last taken for what he truly is.

Restored to perfection, the unicorn's full memory flows back. Once vivid recollections of his grove and reflection pool blur together. Were his days always so changeless, so stagnant? The months after leaving his forest are so much starker; his miserable weeks of solitude, Tulio's japes and clever fingers, Chel's banter and unwavering will. The unicorn trembles over those days. The emotions he expected to dull upon the change, to fade away completely, only sink their hooks deeper into his heart. So the unicorn tries to shake himself from the past, and focus on his present.

Immorality is... itchy. His coat itches. His hooves itch. The worst spot is the base of his horn, where it connects to his skull. The unicorn feels stuffed into a hot, scratchy sweater two sizes too small. After his partners, the unicorn most misses hands and the opposable arms that have scratched near any itch. Now he rubs his horn against trees and rocks. He swears up a storm over it.

Those first few weeks after the change, the unicorn swore he felt his body dying all around him. Now every motion is effortless. Age will never wear him down. Instead of feeling restored, he is robbed of that mortal fire. His body has not quite realized it is immortal yet. His heart hammers in his chest as if every beat counts. His eyes sting with tears they cannot shed.

The unicorn keeps watch over all paths out of the valley. He only expects two people to travel today, if they cannot stand the festivities.

Hours or centuries later, Tulio and Chel hike up the road he once rode so often with Altivo. They cannot know he shadows them now. His steps make no sound and his pale coat is only a glimmer of sunlight. Still their banter falls into a familiar pattern; not the rapid fire exchanges they just use for each other, but gentler, with lulls between their words a third participant might easily slide into.

At the top of the ridge, they turn to admire the view. Tulio whistles. "Wow. This city sure is something, isn't it?"

"It was created by the gods," Chel answers fondly. She favors one leg. The other was badly bruised by the Jaguar. "Now it is a land that unicorns have walked."

Tulio sucks in a deep breath. "I'd like to believe Tzekel-Kan tried watching his god tear us apart from a distance, and that then the bastard got trampled by a thousand angry unicorns without them ever realizing he was there."

Her eyes glitter darkly. "Once Balam Qoxtok abandoned this world he probably crumbled into dust. Someone brushed him away somewhere."

The unicorn snorts, ghosting out of the jungle shadows. "If he survived the loss of his god, it was so Miya could order him pushed into that giant whirlpool to the underworld. That way they can be together until the end of time."

Unicorns are silent as snowfall. He waits for Tulio to squeal in surprise, to clutch dramatically at his chest. Instead his partners only smile and nod at his imagination.

The unicorn is almost miffed. "Is that all then?"

Tulio rolls his eyes in fond exasperation. "Please, partner, you've been eavesdropping on us for ages now. We know you better than that."

Chel grins. "You can't sneak up on us if we already know you're there."

Their moment of happiness is fleeting as a soap bubble. Tulio's face crumbles. "I-I'm sorry. So, so sorry. I-I never-"

The unicorn tosses his head and tries for lightness. "For what? Making me immortal? Changing me into the most magnificent creature in all the world?" His partners only stare at him with wide, wet eyes. The flippancy falls from his voice. "What's done is done. The Jaguar knew me regardless. If I'd stayed... as I was, then..."

Chel would be dead under a god's claws. Tulio would have either died beside her, or survived through his curse to witness those he loved brutally murdered. The unicorn himself would have died, drowned in the sea or under Balam Qoxtok's crushing bulk. He shakes himself from those thoughts. Once more, his horn kisses their brows, and rids them of the Jaguar God's lingering spite.

"I'm not sorry," the unicorn murmurs. "Not so long as you're both safe and sound because of me." Green eyes take in Tulio, who stands so much lighter without the weight of immortality bearing down upon him. "You are a true wizard now. It... It suits you."

Tulio laughs sadly. "If you think so, then that must be true."

Chel takes his hand. "Of course it's true. You're Tulio the Trickster, Tulio the Magician, Tulio the Great and Terrible."

The unicorn's coat itches harder than ever. He can never manage such closeness again. He instead noses his way under their palms, until they near touch his horn. Their touch only sharpens the itch into an ache. "Don't sell yourself short in this. You're Chel, who outsmarted pirates and made war incarnate stand still."

She leans her head against his swan-white neck. "I had good reason to be brave."

"Well, you two have years and years ahead of you yet," he says with forced exuberance. "What's next?"

Tulio opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. "Um... You know, I never thought I'd actually get this far. Now that I have my power under control I can give up the smoke and mirrors. I can hone my craft as an honest con artist." He pauses. "And, er, try using my magic for good when needed. You know, bring some rain here, enchant a fire-breathing dragon there."

"No plans but the trail you blaze, huh?" Chel grins. "Sounds like my kind of life." Their joy falters into uncertainty as they regard their partner. "W-What's next for you?"

The unicorn shivers under their stares. "The others have already gone. I suppose it's time to get back to my own forest too. I'll clean up the mess seasons made of it, remind my animals of their manners. It will be... peaceful."

The unicorn is the first and only one of his kind to lie. He will never know peace again. He has been mortal, and part of him will always be mortal. He is full of tears and love and hunger he cannot express. He cannot die, but is no longer like the others, his own mother. No unicorn has ever been born who shall ever regret, and now regret he does. He'll regret all that could have been when his partners are dust, and Tulio the Trickster's name remembered even more highly than Hermes Trismegistus.

Tulio blinks, then offers up a wry hand. "Well, good luck."

"Yeah," the unicorn chokes out. He puts his hoof in that warm grip, a heat that near ignites him. "You too." Green eyes turn to Chel. "And good luck to you. In... In everything."

Strange expressions war across her face. Then it settles into blazing resolve. "Ah, to hell with it."

The unicorn stares dumbly on as Chel gently presses her hands against his cheeks. He shivers under her touch as if he'll fly apart. Yet he can't, _won't,_ pull away. Tulio still holds onto his hoof. Chel brings his head to hers. His nostrils flare at her breath. She softly kisses his velvet nose.

Fire, sweet and sharp, ripples across his form. It flares up with a vengeance from within. Tulio had only forced it down, never doused it. There is a sound like breaking glass, a graceless squawk. He tumbles forward and takes his partners with him. They collapse in a flustered heap.

He blinks blearily up. Tulio gapes down.

"...W-What?"

"What?" Tulio repeats. "Chel, _what did you do_?"

She sobs through her laughs. _"I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!"_

Before he can ask her what she means, her lips mash against his own. This time he instinctively returns it. His fingers twine into her hair.

...Wait.

Tulio blunders his way in too, and all reason falls away.

When Miguel fully returns to himself, he is utterly nude and utterly debauched in the middle of a thankfully deserted road. Chel staggers up from their huddle to wrench her dress from a bush. Tulio drapes his robe over Miguel's shoulders and begins an ill-fated search for his pants. Their very bewildered partner blinks after them, then drapes the robe over parts a unicorn couldn't care less about.

"Um, not that this isn't all wonderful beyond words, but exactly happened earlier?"

Tulio, now perhaps the greatest wizard in the world, sticks up a grandiose finger. "I have... no damned idea." He arches a brow at their partner. "Perhaps you could enlighten us."

Chel beams. "It's simple, Tulio. You just did what your mentor couldn't."

Tulio ponders this. His jaws slack. "A-Are you trying to say I made a man into a unicorn?"

Miguel sniffs just on principal. "I already was a unicorn before all this, thank you very much."

"Yes, Miguel, you _were."_ She smirks. "Unless all unicorns purr after people they're sexually attracted to, and write love songs."

Miguel flushes red at memories of that night, then even redder at her implications. "T-Those were drafts! I never got the chance to finish before that cat creep ruined it all."

Tulio's still caught up in the logic of it all. "So you're saying _true love's kiss_ broke the spell?"

Chel's smug silence says it all. Just as their partner starts to splutter about magical theory, Miguel steals another kiss for good measure. The magician cuts off in dizzy ecstasy. "I've had this happen to me three times," he says brightly. "Isn't the third time supposed to be a charm?"

"Well, yes." Tulio rubs the back of his neck. "But I think that's all I have left me in me. At least for messing around with unicorns."

Miguel kisses both their brows, the sensation far sweeter with human lips than an ivory horn. "Then it's a very good thing I'm _not_ a unicorn." He squeezes their hands. "We've already been over the long-term plans. What's the next step?"

"Clothes," Tulio answers immediately. "Basic human decency secured, we go back down to the city and drink ourselves silly with the rest of them. We've _earned_ a break."

Chel tilts her head in thought. "After that, we buy another horse or two. I don't think Altivo would appreciate calling all three of us around."

Miguel grins. "No. He really wouldn't. But he might oblige an ex-unicorn and his partners."

They stumble their way through the city streets hand in hand. Adults take one look at their rumpled clothes and disheveled hair, and ask no further how they spent their festivities. Chief Tanni's boys, who near tackle Miguel, bombard him with questions. Even when their dad laughs and sweeps them all up into a crushing hug, they want to know where he's been, all that's happened.

Miguel certainly won't lie to them. However, he will edit the truth for innocent ears. "Well, we sneaked into the Jaguar God's temple. Chel and Tulio tricked a skull into showing us the secret passage down to his lair. He tried attacking us, but Chel stopped him with a rock. Then Tulio changed me into a unicorn to fight him. I drove the Obsidian Jaguar into the sea and freed all the unicorns he had caged there. Now that I'm no longer the last unicorn, I'm free to be whoever I want to be."

The boys stare at him in varying degrees of disbelief. He splutters at the indignity of it all. From their parents' wide-eyed expressions, Miya and Chief Tanni certainly believe.

Chel and Tulio bite back laughter. He pouts at their treachery.

His smile breaks through anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original story ends with the unicorn returned to her immortal state, both forever regretful of her experiences as a mortal woman and joyful that unicorns are back in the world. Her human lover rules as a good and just king who never quite gets over her either. Needless to say, our idiots are not the type to take the bittersweet way out XD
> 
> All that's left is the epilogue. 


End file.
